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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24521314">Kungai</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/helenraven/pseuds/Helen%20Raven'>Helen Raven (helenraven)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Angel: the Series</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, birthdayverse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:33:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>253,450</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24521314</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/helenraven/pseuds/Helen%20Raven</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The full history of the relationship between Gunn and Wesley in the Birthdayverse.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Charles Gunn/Wesley Wyndam-Pryce</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Part One</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This novel was initially published in 2004, and can also be found at <a href="http://kelper.co.uk/helenraven/">the Helen Raven website</a>.</p><p>  </p><p> Many thanks to Vic, for heroic and revelatory beta-reading; to Laura, Bridie and Elena, for giving me some chance of faking it; and to minitrog, for the picture and for two years of world-class listening.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gunn and the other three men had been on patrol for nearly three hours when they headed into the back streets between Normandie and Western. Denker, with its row of peeling storefronts, wasn’t usually part of their route, but they heard the sound of fighting from a block away. No problem figuring out where the sound must be coming from: the thrift shop in the middle of the block was the only store with any lights on.</p>
<p>“Grille’s down. Looks like it’s still padlocked.”</p>
<p>“Must’ve got in through the back. Or it’s a domestic.”</p>
<p>As soon as they got close enough to see through the window, they knew it wasn’t a domestic. There were at least six men in there, and they all knew how to fight. Looked to Gunn like they were set to kill each other – not to make the other side back off, choose another part of town, but to really make it final.</p>
<p>“Looks like business.” They didn’t come out on patrol to stop white thugs from breaking one another’s necks. Not black thugs, neither, but make all the faces white like that, and Gunn wasn’t even gonna wonder what the fight was about. “Nothing to -” Gunn was about to drive off when one of the men inside was thrown against the backing board for the window display. The board gave way, and then the man was sprawled on his back in the window, giving Gunn and his team their first clear view of any of the faces inside the store. It wasn’t any kind of man there in the window: it was a vampire. Before Gunn and the other three could even draw breath for an exclamation, the vampire was a cloud of falling dust, staked with a speed and skill Gunn could hardly believe.</p>
<p>“Man!”</p>
<p>“We’re on it!” The fight was about killing vampires - all Gunn and his men needed to know. Gunn put his foot to the gas and took them to the alley round the back. There was a convertible with both front doors left open, parked at an angle halfway along the alley. Gunn pulled up behind it, they leapt out of the truck and headed for the open door of the store two-by-two. They all knew the procedure, knew that the others knew it: Gunn had not needed to give a word of direction.</p>
<p>Jackson and Rondell were first in, took the nearest vampire, and Gunn and Taye took the next-nearest. Both vampires were gone in seconds, and Gunn and Taye were eager for their next vampire, but it seemed there were only two left and they were already taken. One was being kicked around the room by a large man, clearly a born fighter; it must have been one of those kicks that had sent that first vampire crashing through the board. The other vampire was backed against the counter that ran the length of the side-wall to Gunn’s right, trying to find a way to deal with the swinging axe of a man who didn’t look like he should be any kind of fighter. An accountant, he looked like, should be fussing over numbers at some desk. If the other guy was a born fighter, then this one was every skinny white guy with glasses who ever set your teeth on edge.</p>
<p>He was pretty good with that axe, though. It was a double-headed axe with a two-inch spike at the end, and Skinny McNumbers was using the spike to keep the vampire at a distance, keep it moving, wear it down with wound after wound, clearly waiting for his chance to take a swing at the vampire’s neck without leaving himself open. He wasn’t as good as Gunn would have been, though, or half of Gunn’s crew. He didn’t have the balance, and he didn’t seem to know a chance when he saw it. Right there, after the jab to the shoulder. He should have switched the axe to his left hand, and then he could have -</p>
<p>He didn’t have a left hand. The left sleeve of his white-white accountant’s shirt was empty, folded up and pinned flat over the armhole. So that was the problem with the balance, that was why he was still waiting for his chance. Gunn asked himself how he had not seen that immediately, because now that empty sleeve seemed like the most noticeable thing in the room. Most of the time he couldn’t even see it, because the man was facing the counter and Gunn could see only his back or his right side, but the knowledge of that absence drew all of Gunn’s attention.</p>
<p>Taking on a nest of vampires with an axe when you were a skinny guy with glasses: that earned Gunn’s respect even if you did turn out to be an accountant. But to go into battle with only one arm, even with your friend the fighter... Against five vampires. That earned more than respect. Gunn was pretty sure of his own courage, but it would be a reach, it would be a big reach, to imagine himself with what this man was doing. OK, not Skinny McNumbers. Make it Skinny-and-Brave.</p>
<p>Gunn heard Fighter bring his vampire down, heard the strike of the stake, the sigh of disintegration. He didn’t turn to look, determined not to miss a second of what was happening with the axe, but expecting Fighter to join in, bring the battle to a quick end. The vampire must have been expecting the same thing, because it suddenly ducked to the left, taking a deep wound in the forearm as it pushed past the axe-blade, and ran for the only exit. Maybe it hadn’t realised that Gunn and his team were there, or maybe it thought it would be quick enough to get past them. Rondell got there first, but Gunn knew that any of the four could have stopped it. They cheered, slammed in for a round of high-fives, then broke apart and turned back to face the other men.</p>
<p>Gunn stepped forward, hand held out towards Fighter. Skinny-and-Brave was a few feet closer, but Gunn was aware that he hadn’t put the axe down yet, so shaking hands could be awkward. Besides, Fighter’s style looked closer to his own - seemed like the easiest way to approach them. “Man, that was a good fight! Who the hell are you guys?”</p>
<p>Fighter took a step backwards, suddenly clumsy and uncertain. And Gunn had to struggle to keep on thinking “Fighter”, when the awkward movements, the wary eyes were saying “The Fat Kid”. He looked like a lifelong victim, exactly the Fat Kid kind, even though the face and the body could have belonged to a male model. Gunn stopped, let his hand drop to his side, then looked at Skinny for guidance, maybe an explanation.</p>
<p>Skinny was bending to lay his axe down on the floor. Then he went to stand in front of Fat-Kid Fighter - and this revealed that he was at least as tall as the other man, able to shield the other’s face from Gunn’s view.</p>
<p>“It’s OK, Angel. These gentlemen saw us fighting, and they came and helped us. They killed three.” His voice was quiet, but it reached Gunn clearly. Gunn had never before been in the same room as an English accent. If he closed his eyes he could have been watching Masterpiece Theatre (which would have meant that he’d dropped the remote while channel-hopping). He could have been listening to Lord Stiff-Neck on the lawn drinking tea. What the hell was this man’s story? What had brought him from tea on the lawn to an L.A. thrift shop?</p>
<p>“I - I didn’t see it. Wouldn’t I have seen it?” Fighter was American. No clue in his voice which state he might be from.</p>
<p>“You know you don’t see everything. It doesn’t matter. They helped us. They helped us save those people.”</p>
<p>Gunn saw Fighter – Angel, was it? - tilt his head slowly to the side, like he was getting up the courage to look around Skinny-and-English. But then he jerked his head back, and Gunn thought he saw him shaking his head. “What - What do I -”</p>
<p>A brief touch of the hand to a solid shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. Why don’t you go and check on the car? I’ll be with you in a few minutes. These gentlemen can see that you’re not ready to meet them right now.”</p>
<p>Gunn took the hint first, moved to behind the counter, well clear of the path to the door. He turned to gesture to the other men to follow him, but they were already on the move. Skinny walked his friend to the start of the corridor, keeping between him and the counter. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.” He waited at the door, watching. Gunn heard the footsteps and then the slamming of a car door, and Skinny finally turned to face them.</p>
<p>“So who are you guys?” Gunn didn’t hold his hand out this time. He had no idea now what to expect from these men.</p>
<p>“Wesley Windham-Price.” A nod towards the door. “Angel. Thank you. You’re obviously very experienced. And very well trained.” A pause. This Windham-Price was a serious man. He hadn’t smiled, hadn’t come close to smiling, even when saying thank you. “Were you… sent? Or are you here on your own?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “We were on patrol. Do it every night. Heard the noise. Haven’t seen vampires down this way, though, since…” He looked at the others for help with the date.</p>
<p>“Two years? The nest on 52nd must’ve been two years ago.” Yeah, that’d been Taye’s first big fight since he joined the crew. Didn’t surprise Gunn that Taye was the one who remembered.</p>
<p>“Then I’m very glad you kept it on your patrol route. This nest…” Windham-Price gestured with his head to the room behind him. “They were going to take over the shop. Prey on the customers. I think they could have made it last for months.”</p>
<p>Gunn said, “Ugly. Yeah, woulda been real ugly. How d’you find out about it?”</p>
<p>“Angel - We had a tip-off.”</p>
<p>“Good tip-off. Y’re not short on experience either. How long you been huntin’ vampires?”</p>
<p>“A few years. Hunting demons. Sometimes the demons are vampires.”</p>
<p>“Yeah? We keep busy enough just with vampires, and there’s twenty of us.” Twenty since two months ago, two months from the previous Saturday, when Alonna had died. “How d’you keep up?”</p>
<p>“We don’t try to patrol. We try to advertise, where we can.” He reached in his hip pocket, pulled out a slim wallet, put it on the counter in order to open it, and then handed Gunn a business card.</p>
<p>Angel Investigations.</p>
<p>The Experts on Demons.</p>
<p>For all Types of Information and Assistance.</p>
<p>Wesley Wyndham-Pryce.</p>
<p>Partner.</p>
<p>And an address in Inglewood, about five miles south from Gunn’s base. Wyndham-Pryce, then, not Windham-Price. Seriously Masterpiece Theatre. Seriously. “So you’re out on a case tonight?”</p>
<p>Wyndham-Pryce shook his head, put his wallet back in his pocket. “A tip-off. There’s no client. I hope the people would never even guess what would have happened to them.”</p>
<p>“D’you get much work? What’re your rates?”</p>
<p>“It’s a sliding scale. For you. For anyone you vouched for. It would obviously be free.” He took a step back, looked along the corridor towards the car, then looked back at Gunn. “I have to go.”</p>
<p>“Sure.”</p>
<p>Wyndham-Pryce knelt, picked up his axe, then said, very sincerely, looking round at all four of them, “Thank you. Good luck with your patrols.” He turned and left, and Gunn and his team stayed exactly where they were behind the counter until they heard the car drive off.</p>
<p>Jackson said, “You hear him with ‘these gentlemen’? Jeez! You think they all talk like that?” Rondell said, “Freakiest coupla white guys I ever saw,” and Taye said, “Good fight, though. Give ‘em that. They took on five. Just the two of them.”</p>
<p>Gunn put the business card in the pocket of his jacket. “Let’s go. Get back on patrol.” He pulled the back door closed when he left; they hadn’t tried to set the store right, but he wouldn’t leave it looking like an open target.</p>
<p>When he was undressing for bed a few hours later, Gunn moved the business card to his wallet. He lay in bed and found himself working through a familiar, well-worn set of thoughts about Alonna. He was still trying to figure out why the real feelings of grief and guilt hadn’t hit him yet; wondering if it would happen tomorrow, next week? He missed her, but really only in the way he’d missed friends who’d moved away from L.A. You’d almost think he didn’t realise she was dead, like he was telling himself she’d just moved away; when she was settled, she’d write, she’d call.</p>
<p>Well, of course he knew she was dead. But he didn’t feel it, not properly. Shouldn’t he be torn up with the grief and the guilt, having to force himself to get through each day, to deal with other people? What did it mean that instead of that he was enjoying life more than he had in years, he was remembering how it felt when he liked himself? He had the wrong feelings, and he didn’t even feel guilty about that – he just felt puzzled.</p>
<p>He’d been so busy since she died. Did that make sense as a reason? Busy organising the crew, selecting deputies, setting up new training in weapons and tactics. And busy weighing up his contacts, figuring out how to get the best use out of every friend and every acquaintance. He was good at all this: making things happen, getting people to help him - and, especially, getting people to help themselves, to believe there was always some way out. Maybe he was even better at it now than he had been when the crew had first formed, out of the Skills Exchange he’d organised at the Rec Center.</p>
<p>Felt like a long time ago, the Rec Center: all that great energy and him right in the middle of it. Hard to believe it had only been four years ago, felt like twice that - half a lifetime, even. Hard to believe even when Gunn knew exactly why the time had felt so long: because of the vampires, because the vampires had moved in during those years, and after they moved in Gunn’s whole idea of time had gradually changed. Before, each day was a chance to get things done, but after… Each day had too many hours, each minute another minute when the vampires might attack. And the crew was his crew, and he was the one who had to get them all safe to the end of every day, pull them from hour to hour while he knew the vampires would never give up, not when they had all the time they could ever want. The years against the vampires had changed Gunn’s ideas about so many things, not just about time. If he wanted to sum it up, he’d say he’d gone from always seeing the possibilities in every situation and every person, to always seeing the worst.</p>
<p>No one had seemed to notice those changes in him. Or... Sure, Alonna could see the rage, and the suspicion, and the despair. Seemed sometimes like that was all she’d had to say to him in the last months: to tell him every thing she saw in him that wasn’t right. But she’d never remind him how he used to be so different, never ask if he knew how it had happened, if he had any ideas for how to get back to the way he used to be. But why should she be the one to remind him, when everyone else had forgotten the old Gunn, the Gunn they’d followed from the Rec Center - when even Gunn had forgotten?</p>
<p>People had noticed, though, when he’d changed back, got all that energy, that flood of ideas. The original members of the crew recognised his old style and his old attitude, and he’d seen them teaching the newer members what to expect. He guessed – from what they didn’t say, what they didn’t do – that they thought he must be keeping a promise to Alonna, so they were thinking his cheerful mood was a front, an effort every day to keep it going.</p>
<p>No harm letting them think that, and he didn’t know himself why he’d woken up on the third day after Alonna died remembering exactly how he’d felt when he knew the Skills Exchange was going to work, and with a list of twenty things he could do that same day to make life better for his crew. Could be just the fact that, for the first time, they’d been up against vampires who’d had a real plan of their own. Could be the exhilaration of surviving the major battle with those vampires immediately after Alonna had died. Even at the height of the battle, without realising, he’d been seeing and storing everything that was happening, so when he woke on that third day, he knew exactly why he believed that the fight could be almost easy when the crew worked properly together, and he could see every one of the hundred, two hundred moments when opportunities had been lost because the crewmembers didn’t know well enough what to expect of each other. Possibilities. Was all about possibilities. A week before, he’d’ve thought of those moments and just seen them as lost – and his fault they’d been lost, each one somehow his fault. But now... Who’d be thinking “lost” when the truth was that the crew had won? They’d done so much right in that battle, and he was proud of all of them, and fired up to see everything they’d do even better in the next battle. So he was that Gunn again, the one who saw possibilities, the one who made them real. And you wanted proof of how real, then you just had to count the dusted vamps.</p>
<p>The vampires in the thrift shop, they’d’ve been easy to kill even in the bad days, when Gunn’d lost sight of how to do what he did best. But back then he’d’ve come away from the fight thinking that the two white guys were ungrateful, unfriendly weirdoes, and he would’ve let them know what he thought, probably walked out long before the English guy could’ve given him that Demon Expert business card. He wouldn’t have been interested in them, maybe not even impressed by that Angel guy’s skill or the English guy’s courage; he wouldn’t have given them the benefit of any doubt, not once they’d done just the first thing to bug him. And they’d done more than one thing: not asking any names, not smiling, leaving after just a couple of minutes; and that Angel turning into a stuttering dork the moment a strange black guy talks to him. That still did kind of bug him, had him making bets with himself about how different the two would have acted if Gunn and his three had all been white –seen that often enough, not hard to know the signs. But he hadn’t let it bug him enough that he had to walk out, so he’d got the card and the offer of help, and he’d got to see that the English guy did have it in him to show respect. “Anyone you vouch for.” Could mean more, even, that he’d said it without a smile.</p>
<p>So Gunn was interested in them, he was wondering about them. Yeah, there was the bet about how they’d’ve been different with their own kind, but alongside that he was thinking that maybe he shouldn’t be so sure what kind that really was. English, with a fancy name and a missing arm. And with a friend who scares vampires but then has to be walked to the door. So they hadn’t acted like Gunn would’ve if they’d been the ones come to help Gunn and his crew – that didn’t matter, not the way Gunn was thinking now. He didn’t have to figure out everything about them, just enough to get the best use out of them for the crew. Starting with: was Wyndham-Pryce really an expert? and how much work would he really do for free? Gunn would be looking for a chance to test him out.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>“Hello.”</p>
<p>Just hello, not “Angel Investigations. How can we help you with your question about demons?” Maybe Wyndham-Pryce didn’t believe in the hard sell. Or maybe this was also his home number. Their home number?</p>
<p>“Mr. Wyndham-Pryce? This is Charles Gunn. We met a couple of weeks ago in that thrift shop on Denker. You gave me your card.”</p>
<p>“Mr. Gunn. Yes. Hello. Is there something I can do for you?”</p>
<p>“Is this a good time to ask if you can get me some information about a type of demon? If you’re busy with paying work, I can -”</p>
<p>“We’re not too busy. What type of demon? What sort of information do you need? And how urgently?”</p>
<p>“I have a friend, Anne, who runs a homeless center for teens. At Normandie and 38<sup>th</sup>, pretty near Exposition Park. She thinks there’s a nest of some kind of demons living in tunnels under the park. She’s heard stories from three or four different kids. She doesn’t think they’ve hurt anyone yet, but she wants to know exactly what she should be warning the kids against, if we need to do something more.”</p>
<p>“How consistent are the descriptions of the demons? I should talk to the witnesses myself, visit the park, but I may be able to eliminate some possibilities beforehand.”</p>
<p>“They’re pretty consistent.” Gunn passed on the description Anne had given him, and the questions that Wyndham-Pryce asked afterwards sounded good to Gunn: like the guy really did know a lot about demons, like he was trying to narrow the field from a list of hundreds. Not that Gunn could give him any answers. “No, I dunno the park that well. I dunno where the tunnels go. Anne didn’t say exactly where they were seen. I guess you’ll have to go down there.”</p>
<p>“When could you arrange a visit? Would tomorrow afternoon be too soon?”</p>
<p>Tomorrow afternoon? Boy, that was quick. Was that enthusiasm or hyper-efficiency? Or was the guy just trying to get him out of the way as soon as possible? “That’d be fine for me but Anne’ll need a couple of days to get the word out to the kids. Couple of weeks, even, if you wanna talk to all of them.”</p>
<p>“No, one or two will be enough if I can find the right pictures to show them.”</p>
<p>“I’ll call Anne, then, ask her to try for… Thursday, two o’clock? When d’you need me to let you know for sure?”</p>
<p>“Any time on Thursday morning. Give me your number, though, in case I have to cancel.”</p>
<p>Gunn gave his cell phone number, and then broke the connection on that cell phone a few seconds later. No, that was not a man with any kind of supply of small-talk. Gunn had had warmer conversations with the police, even. But he had set to work immediately, so Gunn now knew that it had been a genuine offer.</p>
<p>Wyndham-Pryce was alone in the convertible when he drove up to the teen shelter on Thursday afternoon. He hadn’t said anything to suggest that Angel would be joining him and Gunn hadn’t asked - but he had wondered.</p>
<p>A man with no small-talk, and with no idea about dressing for the occasion. He was in a suit and tie, for God’s sake. For a visit to a South Central teen shelter. And with all those old books under his arm, he didn’t look like any kind of demon-hunter that Gunn would want on his team. While Gunn was still standing at the window, shaking his head, Anne had opened the door and gone out to offer help with the books; Gunn had not thought to mention to her that his demon expert only had one arm. The help was refused, but for a second there, it had looked like Wyndham-Pryce was actually going to smile.</p>
<p>Anne had got two of the kids, Tony and Maxine, and they were in the kitchen, drinking sodas at the table. Anne did the introductions, then Wyndham-Pryce immediately started laying the books out at the far end of the table. Gunn saw the kids exchange amused, dubious looks, and stepped in with the first distraction he could think of. “That Dr. Pepper cold? You got any more?”</p>
<p>Tony said, “In the fridge, man. Help yourself.” A pause, then, with a jerk of the head towards Wyndham-Pryce: “Does he want one?”</p>
<p>Where the fuck was this Tony from? How come they never taught him? A man’s in the room, you put your question to him straight. Or they’d taught Tony fine, and he was showing what he thought of book-learning? Gunn tensed up and looked at Wyndham-Pryce, waiting to see how he’d haul Tony back into line.</p>
<p>Very short wait, because the English man was already saying, “No, thank you.” Not even looking up from his work at the table, and his voice was totally calm. Like he just didn’t care? Or maybe like he’d chosen his own way of showing Tony how he expected people to behave. And Gunn wasn’t thinking, “Where’s your spine, man?” - like he would’ve with any guy in his crew. No, he was thinking, “Yeah, that works. On you, that works.” And seeing a way that the suit could work too - that it might not be some middle-class, out-of-his-depth, point-scoring thing, but just part of the way this guy showed respect for clients: by being well-groomed, taking the trouble to look his best.</p>
<p>By the time Gunn came back with his soda, Wyndham-Pryce had finished laying out the books and had moved to the other end of the table. “Tony, could you leave the room for a few minutes, please? And please shut the door behind you.”</p>
<p>“Uh, OK.” Tony was clearly surprised, but got up immediately, and shut the door quietly as he left. If Gunn had tried something like that with Tony, the two of them would have had to go through a few rounds of joking and testing before Tony could have left. Yes, the English guy did have something, even if it was only the accent.</p>
<p>“Maxine, could you come over here?” Wyndham-Pryce led the way to the books, and Anne and Gunn followed too. “Is there anything on these pages that resembles what you saw in the park?” Once Maxine had started looking at the book, Wyndham-Pryce moved to the other side of the table. To watch her expression? Or just to give her more room?</p>
<p>“Oh!” Maxine was pointing at the second book of the five. “It was this one with the -”</p>
<p>“A Massiac? But please look at them all before you decide. Some of them look very similar.”</p>
<p>Maxine did look at the others, maybe giving them more time than she would have if she wasn’t already sure. Then she went back to the second book, and smiled and nodded like she was greeting an old friend. “It’s this one.”</p>
<p>“Thank you. Now -”</p>
<p>She grinned at him. “I’ll leave the room. And shut the door. And I know, I won’t say a thing to Tony.”</p>
<p>Again, Wyndham-Pryce almost smiled. “Thank you.”</p>
<p>Tony chose the same demon, just as sure about it. While Maxine was returning to the room, Wyndham-Pryce closed and stacked the other books, then they all sat down at the other end of the table.</p>
<p>“The Massiac are harmless. Beneficial, in fact: they mostly eat rats. Some moles. There’s no record of any Massiac making an unprovoked attack on a human.”</p>
<p>Anne said, “What about a provoked attack?”</p>
<p>“They will fight. And they can kill with those teeth and especially those claws. Normally it will take direct provocation. They don’t eat humans, they don’t compete with humans. The only real danger is if you get too near a clutch of their young by accident. And at this latitude they’re fertile all year round. But if you know where the entrances are to their tunnels, and you don’t go closer than about twelve feet, then you won’t bother them. And they won’t bother you.”</p>
<p>Gunn said, “Are they intelligent?”</p>
<p>A brief shake of the head. “Probably not. No one really thinks they have a spoken language. And if you take one away from the group, it…” He shrugged. “It goes into a catatonic state within a few days. Dies within a month. So there are no records of one… learning to play chess, say.”</p>
<p>Maxine: “God, that’s sad! I mean, I need my friends, but… That’s beyond pathetic.”</p>
<p>“It’s quite common among demons who appear to have evolved under -” A pause and then the flicker of genuine enthusiasm was gone from his voice and he was back to business. “But that’s pure speculation. Do you know where the entrances are to the tunnels? Or do you know how thoroughly the area has been surveyed?”</p>
<p>Maxine said, slowly, “I’ve definitely seen one entrance. But when I saw the demons, they were way the other side of the park from there. So there’s probably others, right?”</p>
<p>“Probably. Are there areas where you’re confident that there aren’t any entrances?”</p>
<p>Tony and Maxine said together, “Yeah, most of it.”</p>
<p>“I can start looking for surveys and other reports on the park. But it might be months before I can come back with anything definite. Can you avoid the other areas until then?”</p>
<p>Tony: “Hell, man, we can avoid them forever. No need to put yourself to that work.”</p>
<p>Maxine: “Or we can look for that stuff ourselves, the surveys. If you tell us where to start.”</p>
<p>Again, Wyndham-Pryce insisted on carrying his own books. Anne walked him to the car, waited while he put the books on the back seat, then shook his hand, thanking him for the third time.</p>
<p>“My pleasure.” Finally, a smile, though a brief one. He took another of his business cards from his breast pocket and handed it to Anne. “Call me if you need more information about the Massiac. Or on anything relating to demons.”</p>
<p>“I will.” She turned to Gunn. “Thanks, Charles. You won’t forget next month?” Gunn shook his head, and then Anne was on her way back indoors.</p>
<p>Wyndham-Pryce had definitely passed Gunn’s test. He’d shown that he’d meant it about working for free, and he’d shown that he really did have something Gunn could use for his crew. Watching him at work, Gunn had decided that this wasn’t one just to be kept in reserve for an emergency, but that it was worth trying to bring in, almost as part of the crew, and today, if possible. Could be he had knowledge about vampires that could help improve the whole way they worked. When the three of them had come outside, Gunn had immediately taken up position in front of the driver’s door.</p>
<p>“Man, you really are an expert. How long d’it take you to find all that?”</p>
<p>“A few hours. Your descriptions were good.”</p>
<p>“What would you normally charge for that?” Gunn tilted his head. “In the middle, say, of your sliding scale?”</p>
<p>Wyndham-Pryce looked shocked, shook his head sharply. “No. It was my pleasure.”</p>
<p>“Just wondered. Case I ever meet someone who could pay you what you’re worth.”</p>
<p>Another shake of the head. “No. I don’t -”</p>
<p>“Well, will you at least let me buy you a coffee? Or lunch, if you haven’t eaten already. You like Mexican? I know a good place between here and your office.”</p>
<p>“We don’t have an -” For several seconds he looked at Gunn, almost frowning. Sizing him up? Wondering, probably for the first time, what sort of person he was? “I haven’t had lunch. Thank you.”</p>
<p>The restaurant was almost empty. Gunn picked a table for them by the window. “You don’t have an office?”</p>
<p>Wyndham-Pryce looked up from the menu. “Not any more.”</p>
<p>“So the address on your card? Is that your apartment? Or Angel’s?”</p>
<p>“It’s both. It hasn’t been a good year for the business. We’ve had to save money any way we can.”</p>
<p>Gunn recommended the tacos very strongly, ordered them himself, but the other man chose the meatball soup. Didn’t even order anything to drink, saying he preferred water. Come on. No one preferred water.</p>
<p>Wyndham-Pryce had ordered the soup because it was the easiest thing to eat with one hand. Gunn figured that out the moment he picked up his first taco. Sure, you could eat a taco with one hand, but it would be even messier than with two hands. No, there was no way Wyndham-Pryce was going to eat a taco in public, not while he was wearing that suit, and probably not ever.</p>
<p>They talked about the teen shelter, about Anne, about how Gunn had got involved with the shelter, and about the crew. Gunn gave him most of the history, though he didn’t mention Alonna, and he didn’t admit to just how deep the despair had got after the vampires had moved in, or how long it had lasted, or how recently it had ended. Maybe Wyndham-Pryce guessed though, from some of his comments when Gunn was describing the changes he was now making, and those he was planning. The comments the guy made weren’t being critical, it wasn’t like he was wondering why Gunn hadn’t made those changes years ago - more that he wanted to understand how Gunn kept up that pace. Gunn explained that he’d just got a lot of ideas, all at once a few months ago - hoped he always would have ideas, of course, but no, this was at least twice his normal pace, and though it was great, it was also good to think he’d be back to normal in a few months.</p>
<p>Gunn had smiled as he’d admitted his limits, partly to himself, thinking that the Gunn from the bad times never would have admitted he had any limits, and partly at the English guy, expecting some recognition that Gunn had seen the real point of those comments. But Wyndham-Pryce just looked more serious, frowned even, though he looked down at his water-glass and not at Gunn. Gunn was on the verge of deciding that he’d made enough allowances now for the man being a foreigner, not knowing how to behave, and that there really was a problem with the guy’s attitude, then Wyndham-Pryce raised his head, looked straight at Gunn again, and asked a question about the new weapons training that showed how carefully he had been listening before. The man was already interested in the crew, really interested, already had ideas (“Had you thought…”, “Angel always says…”). Gunn would ask him over dessert how much he could help, him and Angel, set a date for their first visit to the base.</p>
<p>“The flan’s good here. I always have the flan.” He did always have the flan, but this time he’d thought through the practicalities, made sure he was recommending something the other guy could eat.</p>
<p>“I don’t have much of a sweet tooth.” Gunn could have guessed that. He thought the man had the thinnest face he’d ever seen. How bad had that year been for their business? Had there ever been a time when he had had flesh to spare? “I would like a coffee, though.”</p>
<p>Gunn waited until after they’d gotten a refill of coffee. “I like the way you work. You and Angel. I mean, I’m seriously impressed. What would you think about teaming up with me and my crew? Whatever way we can figure out. Like coming on patrol sometimes? I’d like to know what you think about the way we do things.”</p>
<p>Gunn saw a gleam of startled pleasure, but it was over in a second, and then Wyndham-Pryce was shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gunn, but we couldn’t do that. It’s not…”</p>
<p>“Charles.” Gunn shrugged, disappointed, but still confident he’d be able to keep Wyndham-Pryce in reserve. “I guess you don’t need more unpaid work right now. Better to get out, look for business.”</p>
<p>“It’s not that. It’s Angel. He couldn’t go on patrol with you.”</p>
<p>“With us? ‘cos of -?” Gunn nodded slowly, feeling bitter but not sure yet how much he was going to show it. “Yeah, I had a bet he wouldn’t’ve been like that with a white guy. Guess he didn’t help you with any of this Massiac work?”</p>
<p>“No! No. That isn’t - He couldn’t go on patrol with anyone. I wouldn’t be able to make him understand what you were doing. Certainly not well enough for him to keep focused on it for several hours. He wouldn’t be any use to you.”</p>
<p>Sounded like an excuse to Gunn, and not a good one. “He seemed pretty focused in the thrift shop.”</p>
<p>Again, the shaking head. “He was acting on a tip-off then. The tip-offs… They show him pictures of what he has to fight. He can focus on those pictures, but you can’t rely on him for anything else.”</p>
<p>How could anyone take that seriously? Gunn couldn’t, not for a second, not when he’d seen the big man fight. That was a picture, if you were talking pictures: of a body that was nature’s gift to the world, of fighter’s instincts that Gunn would trust with his own life. “I could draw him a picture of a vampire. You must have hundreds in those books of yours.”</p>
<p>“Mr. -” Wyndham-Pryce closed his eyes briefly. “Charles.” Slowly, quiet and very definite: “Sometimes he doesn’t know who I am. You can’t work with him. I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>Gunn found that he was able to feel guilt after all; not yet over Alonna, but here, over this man he hardly knew. What he’d seen in the thrift shop, yeah, that should’ve told him straight off that there was something seriously wrong with Angel. But he had taken the man’s reaction personally, let it bug him enough that he was never gonna go looking for an explanation that said he just had to ignore it ‘cos this was one white guy who couldn’t be held responsible for his actions. So he’d refused to see the signs that “Angel Investigations” was one badly-injured guy with glasses, an axe and a lot of old books, very far from home, doing anything, doing the damndest things, but still failing, inch by inch, to do whatever he’d promised himself that he’d do for his friend Angel. No, he’d seen all that and thought nothing except, “Weird guy, alright. But I bet I can still get some use out of him.”</p>
<p>“No. No, it’s me who’s sorry. I – I guess it should’ve been obvious. But... what’s wrong with him?”</p>
<p>“Brain damage. It’s a degenerative condition.”</p>
<p>“There any cure?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“Shouldn’t he -” A pause. “Will he have t’go into an institution?”</p>
<p>Flatly: “It would kill him.” The look of bleak determination on that thin face was chilling. “Having to deal with other people, new people. He would be lost. At least with me… He does always know that he should know me. If he didn’t have even something like that to focus on, I think he would be lost, completely lost, in less than a month.”</p>
<p>Gunn tried to reassure himself that at least nothing he’d done had made things worse for the man. He’d been pleased to help Anne, hadn’t he? And pleased that Gunn was impressed enough to ask for more. That would still count for something, wouldn’t it, even when Gunn had done so badly at taking no for an answer? He swallowed, took a mouthful of coffee. “But he has good days?”</p>
<p>“Oh, yes. But they don’t run to a schedule.” Wyndham-Pryce paused, finished his own coffee. “That’s why you can’t fit him in to your patrols.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded, some way to being reassured. The man didn’t blame him for asking or for the way he’d asked; the bleakness was gone and he was all business again. Gunn said, “I was gonna say it wasn’t just Angel I had in mind for the patrols. You can handle yourself. But you got enough goin’ already, don’t you?”</p>
<p>A brief nod of the head. “I wish I could see more of what you’re doing. But I couldn’t leave Angel alone for that length of time.”</p>
<p>Angel wasn’t just the man’s friend, Angel was his lover. That was the only reason Gunn could imagine why a person would hold so strong for someone who wasn’t family: if they’d made some serious, serious promises to one another, long ago. And they weren’t family - one look could tell you that, even before you heard the voices and knew the names. How long had they been together? And where had they met? And were the good days good enough that they could still be lovers? No, no, that couldn’t be something to hope for, that would have to be worse than having nothing: getting into bed with someone you loved, knowing that the next morning he might not even remember your name. No one could be that tough, not even a man who would fight demons for a living when he only had one arm. Gunn had been through rough times, really rough, yet he couldn’t imagine for a second how this man coped - on his own in a foreign country, with no crew, no family, with nothing. And now Gunn felt that he had to know, he had to know everything - or he’d be trying to imagine, and didn’t that usually get you something far worse than the truth?</p>
<p>“Are you - The two of you - I mean, is he your…?” Gunn had already started to ask the question when he realised that he might be wrong. He had no idea how a straight Englishman was likely to react if you called him a fag, but there probably wasn’t any kind of straight man who took that well. Too late - he’d already gone too far to pretend he’d meant something else.</p>
<p>Wyndham-Pryce looked faintly puzzled while Gunn was trying to figure out how to put his question, then his eyebrows shot up, and then he threw his head back and laughed. There wasn’t any edge in his laugh, no kind of dig at Gunn – he just thought it was the funniest, funniest idea. Then, shaking his head: “Me and Angel?” and he burst out laughing again.</p>
<p>Gunn had never felt so glad to be wrong. And not just wrong about the two of them being lovers, but wrong about what the Englishman’s life must be like – because a man who could laugh like that wasn’t worn down to the metal, nowhere near. Gunn shrugged, and grinned, and just sat back, enjoying the sight. The man looked totally different when he laughed. Not like another person, but so much younger. With each new peal of laughter, Gunn got closer and closer to deciding that he liked Wyndham-Pryce. Before, he’d been interested in him, to get something out of him. Now he’d given up on getting anything, but he’d also got past feeling guilty about being blinkered and selfish, and he’d got past the morbid curiosity - and he just liked him for how he laughed, and for the care he’d seen him take of his friend, and for the help he’d given Anne, and the real interest he’d shown in Gunn’s crew, and for wearing his best suit when he was working for nothing and his clients were all street kids.</p>
<p>Finally the laughter subsided to the point where Gunn knew he had enough of the Englishman’s attention to be able to shrug again and say, “Well… Y’know… Just seemed like…”</p>
<p>“No, no, I can -” He was clearly trying to suppress his laughter, but it kept breaking through. “If you knew Angel… Me and Angel. He’s… Nothing would make him think of me like that. Believe me.” Now he was just smiling - and Gunn liked him when he was just smiling, too.</p>
<p>“Yeah, you convinced me.” A broad smile, and then Gunn turned serious. “But, Wesley, it’s a hell of a thing you’re doin’ for him. You know that’s why I asked, right? That’s a hell of a thing to do for a friend.”</p>
<p>Wyndham-Pryce shook his head, now entirely serious himself. “He’s saved my life, more than once. We go back several years, to before the damage started. It was the only thing I could do.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded. “I get it.” A pause. “You know you can call me if you need help with… I dunno. Another nest of vamps in a thrift shop.” The exact opposite to what taking the guy out to lunch was supposed to achieve. But Wesley needed the help, and the crew would enjoy the fights, like they had the one in the thrift shop.</p>
<p>“Thank you. And you know you can call me if you need research on demons or anything else I can do from the apartment.”</p>
<p>They went in different directions on leaving the restaurant, and Gunn drove home wondering how long it would be before they’d meet again, and smiling as he thought of yet another thing that he liked about Wesley, or as he remembered the exact moment when Wesley had burst out laughing.</p>
<p>Making friends with a middle-class white guy - a new experience, definitely, or it would be, when he knew for sure that they were friends. Wesley had become formal again at the end, warmer than he’d been with Anne, but not by much. He held out his hand, thanked Gunn for the meal, and it felt like the end of a business-meeting. A good meeting, but that’s all that you think afterwards: “Yeah, that was a good meeting, that was worth doing.” You don’t drive away wishing the meeting had been longer, wanting to know what the other guy thought about a hundred things that had nothing to do with business.</p>
<p>There were rough patches on Wesley’s hand, calluses, probably, from the weapons training he’d said he and Angel did every day. Every good day, that’d be.</p>
<p>Gunn decided that he even liked the formality. It was part of the man’s style, like the suit; it was how they did things, where he came from. And, OK, with the formality and everything he could be pretty sure that Wesley wasn’t gonna do anything that assumed they’d gotten to be friends. Nothing like calling to suggest another meal (“I’m going to be in your area around lunchtime.” “I’ve found something that might help you with your ideas for locating nests.”), but if Gunn called, did the in-your-area thing, then Wesley wouldn’t need persuading, not like he had this first time. He’d call in a couple of weeks, maybe, before the end of the month.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley called late on a Tuesday night in the last week of the month. Gunn wasn’t on patrol that night, and was hanging out in the workshop along with about half the crew.</p>
<p>“Charles? It’s Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. I need help. Right away.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, what’s happenin’?”</p>
<p>“Angel’s had a tip-off. About a demon that’s about to rise in Fairfax. But Angel… I can’t take Angel. And if it’s really an adult Lurgan, then I’m going to need help.”</p>
<p>“How much help? Four men? Eight? What sort of weapons?”</p>
<p>“Four should be enough, even for an adult. Swords. And some crossbows, if you have them.”</p>
<p>“Where d’we meet? We gonna need a plan, or ‘s it obvious what to aim for?”</p>
<p>“It’s not obvious, I’ll need to brief you before we go in. If we meet at Packard and South Hayworth. That’s two blocks away from the house.”</p>
<p>Gunn didn’t ask for volunteers. He told Jackson, Vince and Eladio to grab a blade and a crossbow each, and to jump in his truck; he would explain on the way.</p>
<p>Wesley was already there when they arrived, standing by his car with his sword at his side. He had two books laid open on the hood, and he used a flashlight to show them the pictures of the Lurgan in its different forms: dormant, ambulant, and with its digestive apparatus deployed. Each form was disgusting and disturbing in its own way.</p>
<p>“It’s probably been lying dormant in the garden for weeks. The most likely location is under one of the trees. I think we should try to force it out, from a distance, using the crossbows. Then three should keep it occupied from the front while the other two try to take out both of its nervous systems at the same time.”</p>
<p>Wesley’s lower lip was split, and swollen badly enough to affect the sound of his voice. Gunn now thought he’d noticed the difference over the phone, but then he’d put it down to the tension and urgency. Of course, Wesley was tense, and he was urgent, but he’d also been punched hard in the mouth, probably some time in the last few hours.</p>
<p>“Sounds good. Who does what?”</p>
<p>The Lurgan was under the second tree, and it erupted from the soil like it had been waiting for them. If they’d been closer to the tree, testing the ground with a sword or an axe, then those first few seconds might have been very different for them. But using the crossbow meant they were well out of its range when it burst out of the ground, and they had time before it reached them to work out what was front and what was back, and the fight was over in a matter of minutes.</p>
<p>Gunn and his team celebrated with their usual high-fives, and Gunn didn’t think for a second of including Wesley. You could tell at a glance that it wasn’t his style, and he didn’t seem offended - probably he was relieved.</p>
<p>“Well done, everyone. You made it look easy.” Wesley was walking towards the street. “I don’t think the family even woke up.” Gunn checked, and the house was still in darkness.</p>
<p>They started to follow Wesley out of the garden, though Vince hung back. “We just gonna leave it there?”</p>
<p>“It attracts insects when it’s above ground. Some animals, too. It’ll be gone by morning.” Wesley’s voice was losing the warmth that it had held when he was congratulating them, but the change didn’t sound to Gunn like a deliberate return to being formal, not a natural part of Wesley’s English style. The change didn’t seem deliberate, more like Wesley was preoccupied, like his attention had switched to some point a long way from them and the garden.</p>
<p>The difference became even more obvious to Gunn when they reached the truck, and Wesley leaned his sword against the tailgate, and turned to shake hands with each of the other men, thanking them. This was Wesley’s formal style and it was sincere and focused, and warm if you knew what to listen for. Gunn hung back so that he would be last and would have a chance to say more than “Hey, any time.”</p>
<p>“Thank you, Charles. I don’t know what I would have done.” The feel of the calluses of Wesley’s hand struck Gunn’s nerves more strongly even than the first time; why, he didn’t know, because half the crew had hands the same or rougher, even some of the girls. Must just be because it was so unexpected, seeing how Wesley still looked more like an accountant than anything else.</p>
<p>Not been stupid enough to come out here on your own. You know that much, right? “What would have happened if we weren’t here?”</p>
<p>“It would have eaten the family. Eventually. Or rather, finished eating, eventually.” Wesley knew far too much about what would have happened; Gunn could see it in his eyes.</p>
<p>“Well… Good thing you got a tip-off, then. You got a good source.” Gunn thought of something, and frowned. “They didn’t have any pictures to show Angel this time? That why he -” Gunn broke off as Wesley flinched, turning his head sharply to the side and taking a step backwards. Then he seemed even more startled by his reaction than Gunn was, and in the process of trying to recover he knocked his sword over. Gunn retrieved it for him, handling it carefully to avoid getting demon gore on either of them.</p>
<p>“Thank you. I have to go.”</p>
<p>“Sure. Been a long day. Now you really know you can call for help at any time.” Gunn grinned at him, but Wesley had become distant again, and the change was more noticeable even than in the garden; he just nodded at Gunn, and was already turning away.</p>
<p>The men were in high spirits on the drive back. Gunn was happy to join in when prompted, was proud of them all, but now he had a preoccupation of his own and he didn’t put his usual energy into the celebrations. Angel had hit Wesley. Something to do with the tip-off. Was it because Wesley had suggested calling Gunn for help? Had Angel seen that as an insult? And in that case, what would Angel do when Wesley got back to the apartment with his books and his sword? Wesley shouldn’t go in there alone. But Gunn couldn’t follow him straight there, not when he had the others in the truck. For all he knew, Angel might be bad enough that he would have to stay with Wesley all night. And besides, he was sure that Wesley wouldn’t want him to tell anyone about Angel.</p>
<p>He dropped the men off at the base, asked Jackson to take his weapons and clean his sword, and headed out again straight away. Wesley’s apartment building had seen better days, but hadn’t given up all hope. Their apartment was on the third floor, at the end of the corridor.</p>
<p>Wesley came to the door in seconds, but opened it slowly. He looked dazed with exhaustion. “Mr. Rodriguez. I’m sorry. I know…” He blinked. “Charles? Charles. What are you – I must have –” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. If I did something to -”</p>
<p>“You did a buncha things made me think I should come check you’re OK. And don’t tell me you’re fine, not when you’ve got the neighbours complaining. Let me in.” Wesley stepped back, and Gunn closed the door behind himself. “Has he tried to hit you again? I mean, since you got -”</p>
<p>Behind a door at the far end of the living room, something was snarling, and there were irregular, muffled thuds, in time with the worst of the snarling, like the thing in the room was throwing itself against the walls or door. Gunn stared at Wesley, appalled. “Tell me you’ve got a dog.”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head, then broke eye contact, sighed, and backed slowly away into the middle of the living room.</p>
<p>“How long’s he been like this?”</p>
<p>“Since the tip-off. The pictures… Something about the pictures. They affected him badly. It happens sometimes. I don’t - It’s hard to tell why.”</p>
<p>“I’m guessing he doesn’t know who you are.”</p>
<p>“I don’t think he knows who he is.”</p>
<p>“He’s locked in?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “I have to, when he’s like this. I had to, before I could leave.”</p>
<p>“Is he likely to hurt himself?” Wesley shook his head. “Is there anything you can do to calm him down?” Another shake. “Then you know what I think?” Wesley opened his mouth, looking determined, almost fierce, probably expecting a lecture on what would really be best for Angel. “I think you and I should have a couple of beers and spend the next hour trying to pretend we have normal lives.”</p>
<p>A still second, then another, and then Wesley burst out laughing, sounding relieved, and sounding like maybe he’d just decided he liked Gunn too. Liked his style, for sure. Gunn grinned like he had at the restaurant, but pleased with himself too, this time, because this time the joke had been deliberate.</p>
<p>“I haven’t got any beers.” Wesley had stopped laughing quite quickly, but his smile was almost teasing.</p>
<p>“Then I’ll go get them. Wha’d’you like?”</p>
<p>“Anything as long as it’s cold. And not Corona.”</p>
<p>“Cold and not Corona comin’ right up.”</p>
<p>Wesley was waiting with the door open when Gunn came back with the beers, and he looked so much better than he had the first time Gunn had seen him in the doorway, like he’d had twelve hours sleep in the meantime. Some of that effect might be down to the fact that he’d changed his clothes, or at least changed his shirt. He’d been wearing something dark before - a dark grey? - but he’d changed it for a cream shirt with a button-down collar. The fight hadn’t been that difficult, or that messy, certainly not enough to make Gunn uncomfortable about staying in the same clothes; but then his day had been nothing compared to Wesley’s.</p>
<p>The armchair looked like it was Wesley’s, with a paperback book open face-downwards over the arm, so Gunn took the couch. Wesley pushed the armchair close to the couch before he sat down.</p>
<p>“What you readin’? Almost looks like it was published this century.”</p>
<p>Wesley put his beer on the floor, picked up and closed the book, then leaned forward to put it on the coffee table. “It’s Angel’s. He’s back on Ellroy again. I don’t think it’s good for him.”</p>
<p>“Not by the sound of things.” Angel was still snarling, still throwing himself at the walls. “But we were gonna do that normal life thing. You had one once, right? You were an accountant, or something. Big office downtown. Wall-to-wall suits. Maybe even regular hours. Before you found out about demons.”</p>
<p>Wesley’s reply was a good ten seconds in preparation. Gunn watched Wesley amuse himself with a succession of benign thoughts, and discovered that Wesley had at least four different types of half-smile. Finally: “Something like that.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. As in ‘Nothing like that. Not even for a day.’ You gonna tell me you were born knowing about demons? You were in the demon-expert stream from kindergarten up?”</p>
<p>“I learned to read from ‘A Child’s Treasury of Verses about Child-Eaters’.” This time Wesley kept his face so straight that Gunn was almost taken in. What must it be like in England, if they all had that kind of sense of humour? Maybe they found it easy to tell, with each other.</p>
<p>“OK. Forget the normal life. How d’you come to America? How d’you come to L.A.?”</p>
<p>He’d come for the demons, of course, but to Sunnydale of all places. Something about a Hellmouth, one of the wonders of the demon world.</p>
<p>“Well, Sunnydale’s gotta have somethin’ goin’ for it. Been up that way a couple of times. Never heard of any reason to get off the freeway.”</p>
<p>“It doesn’t have much to recommend it. I didn’t achieve what I’d hoped. What about you? Having a normal life, that is?”</p>
<p>Gunn learned more about Wesley in the process of talking about himself than he had when trying to get Wesley to talk - Wesley asked a lot of questions, and most of those questions were revealing. He came from money or… if there wasn’t a lot of the money any more, it was at least very old. He was the only child. He’d gone to some fancy prep school, all boys, and Gunn couldn’t believe how young he’d been when they first sent him there, away from home. But he said he’d liked it there; it wasn’t as bad as it sounded. He’d gone to college in London, majoring in eastern languages or something. He loved languages, he even knew some demon languages. He’d started to find translation work in L.A., pointed out the stack of manuscripts on his desk.</p>
<p>They had nothing in common, except that they hunted vampires and demons, and except that they liked one another. They listened to one another. Properly. They remembered. Gunn had never suspected that he could be interested in theories about demon migration, but Wesley, Wesley’s enthusiasm, made him see why it was worth arguing about. They had both nearly forgotten about Angel; sometimes when the sounds from the room changed, Gunn would glance towards the locked door, but Wesley now seemed able to ignore everything.</p>
<p>Gunn didn’t think of Wesley as skinny any more, and couldn’t imagine now how he’d first thought of him as just a typical skinny white guy with glasses - no, as the ultimate skinny white guy with glasses. Wesley was like no one else that Gunn had ever met or seen, and he wasn’t skinny, he was lean, fined down. Gunn found himself studying Wesley’s face, trying to work out how it gave the impressions that it gave. Seen from the front, Wesley’s face was so narrow, it seemed to be made up entirely of long, straight lines, fitted together almost without the need for curves. Very formal. Very serious. And then he turned his head and suddenly his face was all curves: that nose that made Gunn think of a fin, and the jut of his lower lip, almost a pout. The contrast made Gunn want to smile, and seemed to sum up everything that Gunn admired and liked about Wesley.</p>
<p>Wesley’s hand: that offered a contrast too, though not one to make Gunn smile. He hadn’t really noticed Wesley’s hand before, during the meal, but now he knew the touch of the palm – and he could call it up, the nerves of his own palm were remembering it - and Wesley was sitting with his hand resting on the arm of the chair, close enough that Gunn would scarcely need to lean forward in order to touch it. Delicate was the word that kept coming to Gunn’s mind, but that wasn’t right because it was a strong hand, capable. But the fingers were so long, the palm so narrow, the setting of the joints so clear, so neat - it was a hand meant for fine work, and detail. Alright, it was a beautiful hand. Beautifully made. Was that such a strange thing to notice about a friend? To think, “Wesley has beautiful hands.” And then to realise that what you’d thought was some standard phrase. The normal way of thinking something like that about a friend. No. Thinking about Wesley’s hands was a serious matter. Much easier just to watch his face, wait for him to smile, show a new angle on that lower lip.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry. It’s bad enough that your eyes have glazed over. But that I must not have noticed for five minutes… You should stop me immediately.”</p>
<p>“No. I was thinking about what you were saying. So what is the evidence that they used to live in rivers?”</p>
<p>Wesley smiled at him, then got to his feet. “That was all of five minutes ago. You need another beer.”</p>
<p>When Wesley sat down again, they clinked bottles and the backs of their hands touched. Gunn felt the warmth of that brief contact as clearly as he’d felt the roughness of Wesley’s palm.</p>
<p>“What about Angel, then? What happened to his normal life?”</p>
<p>Slowly, dryly: “That was well before my time.”</p>
<p>“When did the brain damage start?”</p>
<p>“About six months ago.”</p>
<p>“Was it sudden? Was he injured? Was he in an accident?”</p>
<p>“I think it was an accident. It happened just before I arrived in L.A.”</p>
<p>“Had he come ahead? To move your business from Sunnydale to L.A.?”</p>
<p>“We weren’t working together then. But yes, he set up in L.A. about a year ago.”</p>
<p>“He must’ve had quite a network here already. What with the tip-offs and everything.”</p>
<p>Sombre: “I think there were big plans.”</p>
<p>“But why’s he still gettin’ the tip-offs? Especially when it - They must be able to see he’s not the man he was. They shouldn’t be showin’ him those pictures. You’re the only one they should be dealin’ with.”</p>
<p>“It’s that or nothing. And for that family in Fairfax tonight…” Wesley shook his head. “It can’t be nothing. They won’t deal with me at all. It has to go through Angel.”</p>
<p>“They won’t deal with you? Is that…” Gunn shrugged. “I dunno, ‘s that ‘cos of you bein’ English? They don’t know what to make of you, with the accent?”</p>
<p>“Maybe. Who knows what they’re thinking? There’s nothing I can do about it. I just have to live with it.”</p>
<p>“That the official line on bein’ English? Don’t tell me it’s in your Pledge of Allegiance.” Smiling, sure that Wesley would know that he hadn’t thought Wesley was talking about being English, and that he didn’t mean any disrespect. The chance had just been too good to miss.</p>
<p>“It’s the chorus of our national anthem.” Again, the straight-faced delivery. Even as he was laughing, Gunn wondered how often people believed Wesley when he did that.</p>
<p>They drank in silence for a while, or at least, they drank without speaking: Angel didn’t seem to like the sound of Gunn’s laughter: his tone had become raw, almost hungry. Again, Wesley ignored the sounds, but Gunn found himself dragged back towards serious thoughts.</p>
<p>“Wesley? When did you lose your arm? You don’t have to tell me. Was it back in England?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “It was here in L.A. Six months ago. I was tracking a Kungai demon. Angel arrived just in time to stop it from killing me. He got me to hospital. And then he helped me when I got out.”</p>
<p>“Was he acting on a tip-off, when he arrived just in time?”</p>
<p>“He was.”</p>
<p>“And you said he’d had his accident before you came to L.A. So he was already…”</p>
<p>“It wasn’t noticeable back then. Not really. I don’t think anyone knew that the effects would be this severe.”</p>
<p>“And it’s gonna get worse?”</p>
<p>“I would think so.”</p>
<p>“You know you’re gonna have to get some help. Or you’re gonna crack up. Doesn’t matter how tough you are. This isn’t -”</p>
<p>Wesley raised his bottle of beer in salute and smiled with open affection. “This is helping a lot. Not just the beer. Thank you.”</p>
<p>“Any time. In fact… Why don’t we do this every week? Tuesdays’re good for me, I’m not on patrol. Hey, we could even start earlier than midnight!”</p>
<p>“Around seven? I’ll get the beer.”</p>
<p>“Deal. And I don’t have to tell you what to do if he gets another tip-off.”</p>
<p>“You don’t.”</p>
<p>“And how long’s he gonna be like this? I can stay tonight. I can drop in a coupla times a day.”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “He’ll sleep it off. Don’t worry. We’ve been through worse. This…” He touched a knuckle to his swollen lip. “I got careless. I know how to make sure it doesn’t happen again. You don’t have to worry.”</p>
<p>“I’ll head off when I’ve finished this, then.” There was less than an inch of beer left. “You gonna be able to get some sleep?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded, turned to point towards a door at the other side of the living room, opposite Angel’s. “Another wall. An inch of solid wood. And an year’s supply of industrial hearing protection. It makes all the difference.”</p>
<p>“Wesley, I do like your attitude.” Gunn finished his beer in one mouthful, put the bottle on the coffee table, and stood up. “I oughta get a start on the sleepin’ myself. Been a long day.”</p>
<p>At the door, Wesley thanked Gunn again, and started to raise his hand. Gunn shook his head firmly, and stepped forward, smiling, to put his arms around Wesley. He heard - and felt - Wesley give a small sound of surprise, and then felt the pressure of Wesley’s hand, warm against his back.</p>
<p>Low, in Wesley’s ear: “You take care, English,” and then Gunn stepped back, and found a completely new expression on Wesley’s face: shy, amazed, pleasure. Gunn felt an expansion of heat in his chest, so strong and sudden it was almost painful, and then, a heartbeat later, a jolt of heat between his legs. Oh, god. Of course. Why hadn’t he realised before? He didn’t just like Wesley, he didn’t just want to know him better - he wanted him.</p>
<p>Oh, man. This was too much. Time to leave. Really time to leave. And time to pray that Angel did sleep it off, didn’t get another tip-off, because Gunn was going to need all of a week to work this one out. He opened the door. “Take care, yeah?”</p>
<p>“And you. Until next Tuesday. What beer don’t you like?”</p>
<p>“It’s all good. Night, Wesley.”</p>
<p>Gunn needed to spend at least the next hour just thinking. Shouldn’t do it when he was driving. Couldn’t do it parked in front of Wesley’s apartment, because Wesley might look out and notice Gunn hadn’t left. There was an all-night diner a few blocks away. He might as well do his thinking over a coffee or a Coke.</p>
<p>There were four other customers. Gunn sat in the window, as he always did; he didn’t like being at the back of a room if he could help it. The waitress said the apple pie was good, and he ordered that as well as a coffee.</p>
<p>So why hadn’t he realised before? It had started over the meal, hadn’t it? OK, the wanting, the obvious wanting, that had just happened, but to drive away wondering if Wesley liked him - a man he’d spent barely two hours with – to be planning for the next meal, the next time he’d call, that was about wanting to be close to Wesley. Wanting Wesley to let him in. And tonight, his reaction to the touch of Wesley’s hand - Jeez! to just the sight of Wesley’s hand. Memorising every new expression on Wesley’s face. Yes, Charles Gunn, those are strange things to be thinking about a friend.</p>
<p>He hadn’t realised, because Wesley was white. He’d never wanted a white man before, not really, not one he’d actually met. Hadn’t wanted many black men, but when he had… Well, he hadn’t thought about it before, never had any reason to, but feeling so close to Luke, and then feeling drawn to the others, afterwards, part of that had to be because of what they shared, what was understood. White guys, even the ones on the crew, the ones he trusted with his life, you knew they lived in a different world, always had, always would. There was always a distance, and he’d never been in the same room as a white body that had made him imagine being pulled across that distance.</p>
<p>And then there was Wesley, and the distance was thousands of miles, and God knows what else, but here he was, with his cock pleading with him to drive back those few blocks, and have Wesley open the door to him again, and then do whatever it took to show Wesley that they needed to be naked together.</p>
<p>Now that it had happened, though, it seemed completely natural. Not in a way to make him think that it should have happened before, that he just hadn’t been looking properly at any white guys, but because it was Wesley and Wesley was clever and brave and funny and surprising, and Wesley liked him and appreciated him, and Wesley’s face never looked the same to him twice. Gunn had to know if the rest of Wesley’s body was as finely made as Wesley’s hand, and so far everything he’d seen and felt through those carefully-chosen clothes told him that it was. How could he sleep, how could he think, how could he make himself do anything else, until he’d seen Wesley naked? Learned everything he could learn about how Wesley was made.</p>
<p>Why didn’t he drive back, knock on the door? He hadn’t been gone long, Wesley wouldn’t be asleep yet, might not even be in bed. But if he was in bed, would he hear, what with the inch of solid wood, and Angel, and everything? And if he did hear, what would happen? Would he say, “I knew. I knew you’d come back. I would have gone after you, if it wasn’t for Angel.”? Or would he look dismayed and shocked, and suddenly exhausted again, and say, “But you know I’m not like that.”? And ask Gunn to leave, and say it would be better if he didn’t come back?</p>
<p>Gunn would wait, rather than have that happen. He would wait until next week. Having Wesley ask him to leave, that would be terrible, terrible for them both - and Gunn had no idea how Wesley was likely to react. Wesley hadn’t given him any clue, except to laugh for a minute straight at the suggestion that Angel was his lover. And, OK, Wesley hadn’t been offended, but wouldn’t you think, if Wesley was at all interested in men, that he’d’ve seen that question as a clue about Gunn, said something since to follow up on it? Or maybe he was only interested in middle-class white men, like he must have been with - he must have, right? - at that all-boys school of his. But that didn’t have to be fixed, tastes didn’t have to be fixed. Gunn had learned that for himself just that evening, so why couldn’t Wesley, too? Give him another week. Or two weeks. Or however many evenings he needed of beers and jokes and open, obvious affection.</p>
<p>Gunn was sure he was important to Wesley. Totally sure. Hell, you’d think Wesley’d never been hugged before! There had to be a chance that Wesley just hasn’t realised yet. Next week he might realise and Gunn’d be looking out for the moment when he did. Or he’d figure out how to play it if Wesley didn’t seem to realise, so it didn’t freak him out when Gunn made his move, and he didn’t ask Gunn to leave.</p>
<p>Gunn thought he could cope OK if Wesley didn’t want him. Been turned down before, got over it fine. But he was gonna make that move sometime. He had to hear Wesley say it, whether it was yes or no.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Gunn spent a lot of that week thinking about Wesley and smiling, whether he was thinking about the jut of Wesley’s lower lip, or about Wesley teasing him about having had a normal life as an accountant, or about what might have happened if he had gone back, if he’d found Wesley waiting for him. He managed to save the most complicated, distracting thoughts for the times when he was alone, and while he enjoyed those times, he didn’t find himself resenting the time he had to spend with the crew. He wasn’t painfully counting down the hours until Tuesday evening. Instead, he felt like he was sailing through the week, surging forward on a wave of energy and enthusiasm. He’d felt almost as good for most of the last few months, since he’d regained his sense of purpose and direction, his belief in possibilities; and Wesley, Wesley’s face, Wesley’s mouth, every line of Wesley’s fine body… So many possibilities there, and all so close, he just had to reach out to touch them.</p>
<p>Wesley called Gunn on Monday afternoon. “Charles? It’s Wesley.” Gunn knew immediately by the tone of Wesley’s voice that he was not calling on business.</p>
<p>“Hey, Wesley. Everything OK? We still on for tomorrow?”</p>
<p>“I wondered what you’d like to eat. If you won’t have eaten beforehand.”</p>
<p>“Pizza?”</p>
<p>“What kind of pizza do you like?”</p>
<p>“Don’t like anchovies. Or spinach or pine nuts or anything that looks too healthy. Just regular pizza but no anchovies.”</p>
<p>“OK.” Sounded from Wesley’s voice like he was smiling. “I think I can arrange that.”</p>
<p>“So how you been?”</p>
<p>“Good. We’ve both been fine. You’ll probably be able to meet Angel tomorrow. He thinks he remembers you.”</p>
<p>Angel. God, yes, there was Angel. Gunn had hardly thought about Angel. Well, Angel was a fact of Wesley’s life. If you wanted to learn how Wesley was made, you also had to learn how to cope with Angel. Maybe Angel would even give Gunn the opening he needed with Wesley; hard to imagine how, but he might.</p>
<p>“Yeah? What sort of pizza does he like?”</p>
<p>“He doesn’t eat pizza. He’ll have eaten before you arrive. We probably won’t see much of him. Even at his best, he’s not sociable.”</p>
<p>After he’d broken the connection, Gunn spent the next five minutes trying to decide whether or not Wesley had been deliberately trying to tell him what to expect from Angel when they had their Tuesday evenings. Reassuring him, even, that they could plan on being alone. But that was probably just what anyone with a difficult roommate would do. Gunn shouldn’t take it to mean that Wesley had given any thought to what might happen when they were alone. Wesley might not have thought about him at all in the past week, except to wonder what to feed him.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley looked wonderful. He was wearing a blue shirt with the top two buttons undone, and with the sleeve rolled up. His forearm was perfect, everything Gunn had imagined to match that perfect hand. And the ledge of his collarbones, and the gap between them… Details that Gunn hadn’t dwelt on during the week, because they hadn’t been important to him in the past. But on Wesley, the sight seemed so intimate, so promising – like Wesley had greeted him with a kiss on the lips - that Gunn suddenly wondered how easily he would recover if Wesley did turn him down.</p>
<p>“Angel? This is Charles. Do you remember him from the thrift shop on Denker?” Angel was almost at the other side of the room, standing at the entrance to the kitchen. There was a smell of fresh tomato sauce and Gunn guessed that the two of them had been standing talking while Wesley cooked.</p>
<p>Angel stared at Gunn, looking like he was concentrating hard. There was no trace of the awkwardness that Gunn had seen after the fight. Wesley had probably prepared him for this meeting. And of course this was his home. “You came through the door. You killed the vampire who was going to - There were more of you.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Me and three of my crew. It was Rondell, though, who killed the vamp who was tryin’ to escape.”</p>
<p>Angel frowned, but Gunn couldn’t tell if the frown was outright puzzlement or just a deeper concentration. Wesley was in the kitchen now, opening the fridge. Gunn watched Wesley fetch and open two beers, and held out his hand to take the first bottle. Gunn had assumed that the second bottle was for Angel, since Angel wasn’t holding a drink, and when Wesley raised the bottle and drank from it himself, Gunn was surprised enough to turn back to Angel and see how he was reacting to such a deliberate snub. But Angel didn’t seem to have noticed anything about Wesley getting beers; he was still staring at Gunn with the same frown.</p>
<p>“Do you remember Charles?” Wesley had come out of the kitchen and was standing almost between them, slightly closer to Angel.</p>
<p>Slowly, still staring at Gunn: “I remember them by the door. Was there shouting? You don’t shout. But I don’t remember… You said he was at Fairfax. In the garden. That he killed the Lurgan with a sword. And the others, too. But I don’t…” Finally, he looked at Wesley, now clearly puzzled. “Was there shouting? Would I have remembered if there had been shouting?”</p>
<p>“There wasn’t much shouting. But you wouldn’t have remembered anyway. You weren’t there. You had to stay here.”</p>
<p>“But I saw it. I saw it in the garden. I knew about the sword.”</p>
<p>“You remember the pictures they showed you. The Powers. You remember what I told you afterwards. About how we killed it with the crossbows and the swords.”</p>
<p>“Does he know I wasn’t there?”</p>
<p>“He knows.”</p>
<p>“Did you tell him?”</p>
<p>“No. He knew already.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded slowly, then looked back at Gunn. “I wasn’t there. Wesley told me.” Gunn wasn’t sure if Angel was talking to him, or to himself. Angel didn’t seem to be expecting a reply, so Gunn just nodded in return, and then took a long swallow of beer.</p>
<p>Wesley had been absolutely right: this man couldn’t have gone on patrol with them, not even on one of his best days, when he was well enough to face another person without flinching. The poor bastard. What would have happened to him without Wesley? At best, he’d be in an institution somewhere, lost, probably terrified. At worst… On the streets. Starving. Definitely terrified.</p>
<p>But you wouldn’t guess, to look at him, that he was so far from being able to fend for himself. You couldn’t guess. He looked so healthy, so much in control. And it wasn’t just the body, it was the presence. Angel gave the impression of being a good four inches taller than he actually was, and he gave off a charge strong enough to bring a shiver to the skin of Gunn’s arms and stomach. Most of that shiver was sex, but it was a sexual reaction that brought no feeling of pleasure to Gunn; instead, it felt like an assault.</p>
<p>Whereas with Wesley… Gunn turned his head, found Wesley looking at Angel with an expression of mild interest and approval. Well, Wesley was a man who probably had the opposite of presence, who didn’t command attention at first sight, but when it was Wesley’s body that called out to his, then the reaction seemed natural as breathing, and just as necessary. What was the difference? Just that he liked Wesley, maybe more than liked him? Or some chemistry thing, that you could never really understand?</p>
<p>Wesley was turning to look at him, and Gunn had to look away, back at Angel, not ready to face Wesley when his feelings were so close to the surface. Trying to find something to say to Angel, something that might move Angel on from that unnerving stare… Well, he’d thought beforehand that Angel might be a useful distraction from Wesley. In the past day he had only managed to think of three things he could try saying to Angel, so he gave himself five seconds and then chose the least unpromising. “Wesley says you’ve been feeling better this past week.”</p>
<p>If anything, Angel’s stare became more unnerving, harder to read. Gunn was about to use his beer again as a way of breaking eye-contact when Angel suddenly took a step forward and said very abruptly, “Wesley wants you to be here.” Then he turned and walked away, heading straight for his room and closing the door behind him.</p>
<p>“Goodnight, Angel.” Wesley was perfectly calm and friendly, like he was saying it to a normal roommate at the end of a normal evening.</p>
<p>Gunn took that drink, then dragged a hand slowly over his head to the back of his neck and gave a deep sigh. “Meaning he doesn’t. Doesn’t want me to be here.”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head, very definite. “I don’t think he meant it like that at all. I think he meant that he’d noticed that I’ve been looking forward to this evening. It was his way of trying to make you feel welcome.”</p>
<p>Gunn pulled a face. “Jeez.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “I know.”</p>
<p>Then they laughed and stepped forward to clink beer bottles, and Gunn finally saw the full meaning of what Wesley had said, as something about Wesley and himself - not just about Angel. Wesley had been thinking about him, enough for even Angel to notice. OK, he mustn’t read too much into it, but it was good to hear; even if they would only ever be friends, it was good to hear. And they would be friends, wouldn’t they? Strange that in all the time he’d spent that week smiling over what he liked about Wesley, he had somehow not realised how much he was missing his company. Yes, he wanted to take that last step forward and reach out to undo the next button on Wesley’s shirt, but more than that, he wanted an evening of pizza and beer and talking; he wanted the evening that Wesley had been looking forward to.</p>
<p>“I never thought you’d be making pizza. The dough and everythin’?”</p>
<p>“It’s the first time I’ve really tried to cook with only one hand. Do more than just heat. Angel… Well, food doesn’t feature with him. And when it’s just for yourself…” Wesley shrugged.</p>
<p>Gunn nodded towards Angel’s door. “I can see you’d think twice about havin’ friends around.”</p>
<p>“If I had any other friends in L.A. In California. I’ve only even -” He frowned down at the kitchen surface. “And that doesn’t really count.”</p>
<p>“What doesn’t?”</p>
<p>Wesley looked at him, head tilted, like he was sizing him up. “You’ll think I’m making it up.”</p>
<p>“Now I just gotta know what you think is gonna sound weirder to me than this.” Gunn gestured around the room with his beer bottle.</p>
<p>Wesley paused, then gave one of his half-smiles. “OK. Do you watch television?”</p>
<p>“Yeah?” Gunn thought it was an odd question, then looked over his shoulder to check, and realised Wesley didn’t have a TV. Not in the living-room, anyway.</p>
<p>“Have you ever seen a show called ‘Cordy’?”</p>
<p>“The ditzy chick with the mouth out to here?” Gunn tapped his fingers high on his own cheekbone. “Sure. Who hasn’t?”</p>
<p>“Me and Angel. He’d heard about the show, though. Showed me some magazines. We knew her in Sunnydale. When she was in high-school. I took her out to dinner once. And apart from lunch with you, that’s the only time I’ve eaten socially with someone since I came here.” Wesley wasn’t bitter; he sounded like he’d only just noticed the fact himself.</p>
<p>“And you say dinner with Cordy doesn’t count? Have to wonder what would count.”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “We weren’t friends. We had a stupid crush on each other for a few months, then we finally worked up to…” He swallowed. “Kissing. And that put a stop to it for both of us.”</p>
<p>“Yeah? It was that bad? Was she not…? Well, I suppose in high-school -”</p>
<p>“No, no, it’s wasn’t - It just didn’t work. Imagine anything you like. It couldn’t be any more excruciating than what actually happened.” A quarter-smile this time, lopsided and wry.</p>
<p>“So what’s she like? Apart from what I’m not going to imagine.”</p>
<p>“She’s sharp. Very good company when she wants to be. Says exactly what she thinks, which saves a lot of time.” A shrug. “There’s a lot to admire about her, including the smile.”</p>
<p>“You must wish -”</p>
<p>An abrupt shake of the head. “I don’t think about it. It was out of the question then, and now Angel wouldn’t want to see her again. Even at his best, he’d think it was pointless, he’d be - And she could take a lot in her stride, but… Why would she?”</p>
<p>“Right. You don’t think about it.”</p>
<p>Another shrug. “It was just a stupid crush.”</p>
<p>Wesley and Cordy. Cordy in high school. That gave Gunn a lot to think about. A white woman. No. A white girl. But it hadn’t worked out. Really hadn’t worked out. He’d said they weren’t even friends. Did that mean Wesley was basically gay? Did it mean his chances with Wesley were better than Cordy’s because he and Wesley were friends? Or did it just mean there was no wonder Wesley’d been looking forward to the evening, if Gunn was the first friend he’d made since he came to California?</p>
<p>“Why don’t you have a TV? Does it bother Angel too much? The pictures?”</p>
<p>Wesley and Angel both preferred to read. Angel hadn’t had a TV even before the accident. Wesley got his news from the newspapers, would always rather see a film in the cinema, had no idea about TV shows. His family had never had a TV, his fancy school hadn’t let them watch TV, and nothing he’d heard since had made him want to start. “What do you like to watch, then?”</p>
<p>A good question, since it was six years since Gunn had been to see any film that wasn’t by Spike Lee, or didn’t involve Denzel or someone else from “Malcolm X”, and it was nearly two years since he’d started steadily crossing TV shows off his list. “The worst of them I just won’t watch. I leave the room. ‘E.R.’ - I’m outta there. I see those credits, the way they have all of the whites first, leave the black men right to the end, and I’m reachin’ for my axe. Keep my mouth shut, though. Well, mostly. Nowadays. You gotta watch somethin’, right? Crew needs their ways t’wind down. If they can manage to ignore that shit, then…” He shrugged. “I ignored it for enough years. Not like I’m doing anythin’ about it like writin’ to the networks. They’re only stupid TV shows. You could sort out every single one, and it wouldn’t make any difference to what’s happ’nin’ on the streets. But I see now what they do, how they do it, and I’m not gonna sit and suck it up like everythin’s OK.”</p>
<p>Wesley asked him more about the worst shows, if Cordy’s show was crossed off his list, and then whether he’d seen “Summer of Sam” - Spike Lee’s latest - and what he’d thought of it. It wasn’t Gunn’s favourite, but he had certainly enjoyed it more than Wesley, who had walked out after less than an hour. “There were too many stupid, inarticulate people having the same stupid, inarticulate conversations over and over again. I’m sure it’s very true to life, but when a film’s giving you a pounding headache, you know you have to leave.”</p>
<p>Gunn could see Wesley’s point, but thought he would have got more out of the film if he’d been closer to that kind of background, and while Wesley was rolling out the dough and constructing the pizzas, he explained what the film had to offer if you’d grown up in the inner-city.</p>
<p>“I thought it must be something like that. But I’m not going to see it again.”</p>
<p>“No, no reason you should. Fuck, I wouldn’t try to watch ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ again, even if you told me there were a hundred good reasons.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t see that. I’ve been boycotting Tom Cruise since ‘Top Gun’. Was that the last film you walked out of?”</p>
<p>The subject of films and actors they hated kept them occupied very happily while they were eating and for long afterwards. They didn’t agree entirely on any of the films or actors, and some, the other had never even heard of, but at least they didn’t disagree entirely, either. Gunn thought it would be years before he would be able to predict what Wesley would hate, or what they would both like, but the learning was gonna be fun, every step of the way.</p>
<p>Gunn turned down a third beer around ten p.m., because he was driving, and Wesley didn’t get another for himself, but made coffee - and remembered that he’d bought some flan. He brought out two but then ignored his own, and Gunn ate the second without bothering to check with Wesley; he felt that he knew at least that much about how Wesley’s mind worked.</p>
<p>Coming up to midnight, Gunn knew it was time for him to leave, if he was going to leave. Wesley had done nothing that could give Gunn any real encouragement, but also nothing to make him give up, either. Everything new that Gunn had learned could be taken in several ways, from the story of Cordy and the terrible kiss, to Wesley’s opinions on the attractiveness of various film stars (Judy Davis, Susan Sarandon and Laura Dern - very attractive. Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze - rodents foisted on a too-tolerant public). From the first time that Wesley gave one of those opinions, Gunn kept waiting for Wesley to ask who he found attractive (ready to say “Angela Bassett and Danny Glover”), but Wesley never asked. But was that a clue in itself, even his main clue? Maybe Wesley already thought he was gay, and was leaving him to bring the subject up in his own time?</p>
<p>Gunn had decided that his own time might as well be now. Wesley just wasn’t going to give him any more clues. There was no point in waiting. And he had an idea for how to play it, and he did think - mostly from the way they’d been able to disagree about films - that they’d get through OK, even if Wesley had to turn him down. And Wesley was sitting there, close enough to touch, with blue shadows across his collarbones, and the hollow between them gleaming moist and warm.</p>
<p>“What were you thinking?” Wesley must have been waiting, just letting him think, for well over a minute.</p>
<p>Gunn smiled, and shook his head. “Not important. ‘s gettin’ late, though.” He stood up, followed by Wesley, who walked him slowly to the door, asking about times and food for their next evening.</p>
<p>At the door, Wesley turned to face Gunn, smiling fondly and starting to reach out for him. Gunn didn’t smile back, but put one hand on Wesley’s arm, near the shoulder, and the other hand on Wesley’s waist. “Wesley. If I don’t do this it’s gonna bug me all week. You told me to imagine, and I have been.” And he drew Wesley close and kissed him, keeping the pressure light, so light, and keeping his mouth closed.</p>
<p>Gunn felt Wesley’s start of reaction at every point where their bodies touched. Wesley gasped and clutched at him, and Gunn held Wesley more tightly, and moved his head so his closed lips could trace the line of Wesley’s open mouth. Just for the few seconds in which he couldn’t stop himself though, because he knew that Wesley gasping was most-likely just from shock.</p>
<p>Gunn drew back, but he didn’t let go his hold on Wesley’s arm or waist. Wesley wasn’t trying to pull away, and he didn’t seem to be shocked – but he did look confused, and yeah, like he thought something bad was happening and it was gonna get worse. So what was the bad thing for him? Being kissed by a man? Being kissed by his friend Charles? Or just something happening that he hadn’t at all expected? When Gunn saw that look on the face of someone he cared about, his instinct was to hold tight, offer reassurance through his body, but that wouldn’t be reassuring for Wesley right now.</p>
<p>“Well, if I was Cordy, I wouldn’t want to stop there.”</p>
<p>Wesley frowned for a second, and then his expression started to clear, like he was gathering together the reasons why the story about himself and Cordy might explain what Gunn had done. Then his expression suddenly changed again, became wary. “And if you weren’t Cordelia?”</p>
<p>Slowly, almost a whisper: “Then I really wouldn’t want to stop.” He drew Wesley close again, also slowly, so there wouldn’t be any surprise this time, so Wesley would have all the chance he’d need to pull away. But Wesley met him with a long groan, and with real need, not how Gunn had been imagining him at all. Sure he’d imagined Wesley wanting him, course he had - but always that he’d play it cool, play it English, there wouldn't be more than a couple of seconds where he couldn’t help himself. The difference, with the heat of Wesley pressed against him, with Wesley’s mouth open and hungry under his… The difference showed him that he hardly knew Wesley at all. He was about to have sex with a friend he still barely knew. Anything could happen. It was… not frightening exactly, but serious and real and with a charge of pure excitement that Gunn hadn’t guessed at when he’d been imagining.</p>
<p>Wesley suddenly drew back, though, after far too short a time. Had it been ten heartbeats? Twenty? Wesley’s expression was much worse than wary now: it was a pained disbelief. Gunn reached out for him, acting now on that instinct to reassure, but Wesley drew back further. “Is this…” Wesley swallowed, again pulling further away. “Is this a joke?” Not a challenge or an accusation, but a real question, asked out of real doubt.</p>
<p>Yes, this was serious. For both of them. This was real. “Oh, Wesley.” Gunn shook his head hard, over and over. “I’ve been wantin’ to do this since the first time I made you laugh. It’s anythin’ but a joke.” Then he paused and gave a long, shuddering breath. “Unless you want it to be?”</p>
<p>Wesley made a small sound, deep in his throat, then almost threw himself at Gunn, and then they were swaying, staggering, pushing one another off balance as they struggled to get inside one another’s skin. At first their struggle involved every part of their bodies that could be made to touch without them breaking the kiss, but after Gunn backed Wesley against the door, the struggle became concentrated on their erections.</p>
<p>When the gasping was on the verge of becoming panting, Gunn did, somehow, manage to break the kiss. “Wesley. Wesley. C’n we slow down? God, I - I’ve spent half the evenin’ thinkin’ about gettin’ you outta that shirt. Gettin’ to see you properly. Kinda imagined we’d save it for your bed.” But Wesley was shaking his head, and he was frowning, looking really uncomfortable. Nothing simple, like he just didn’t want to slow down, and Gunn went with the first guess he found. “Y’don’t take men to bed? Y’like it best like this?” He was curious, not sure yet if he should be offended.</p>
<p>Another shake of Wesley’s head, almost violent. “I can’t - I can’t let you see me. You can’t see what happened to my arm. If you still want to go to bed, we can’t put the light on.”</p>
<p>Gunn couldn’t reply for several seconds, too angry with himself. No, deeper than angry: disappointed. A whole week he’d been thinking about Wesley’s body, and he hadn’t come close, not for a second, to wondering how Wesley felt about that body. He’d do better from now on, he would. “OK.” He leaned forward and touched his lips lightly to Wesley’s. “C’n we go now, then? I still need t’get you outta that shirt.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked so relieved it was almost painful to see. What had he thought Gunn would do? Settle for a quick hump against the door and then leave? Or just leave, ‘cos it grossed him out having Wesley talk like that about the arm?</p>
<p>Wesley led the way, turning out the lights in the living-room before he opened the door. The bedroom was small, with just enough room for the double bed, chair and nightstand against one wall, and the wardrobe and chest-of-drawers against the other. The window was at the far end, opposite the door, and the curtains were open, letting in the light from the street. The light was bright enough that Gunn could see the outline of the furniture, but too dim for him to read any expression on Wesley’s face.</p>
<p>“Is there anything else you can’t let me do?” They were standing by the side of the bed and Gunn had his hand at the neck of Wesley’s shirt, just barely touching but he could feel the third button grazing his palm, and the ledge of the collarbone almost sharp under his fingertips. “Can I take your shirt off? What can I do?”</p>
<p>Wesley brought his hand up to cover Gunn’s. They had both calmed down a lot since they had come into the bedroom. “Yes, of course you can. It’s just… Don’t touch… my shoulder. Don’t… pull anything rough across it. Apart from that, you can do anything.” He moved his hand to Gunn’s chest and curled his fingers around the neck of Gunn’s T-shirt; Gunn closed his eyes as Wesley’s knuckles pressed against the base of his throat, hard and warm. “It’s more what I can do. I can’t undress you. Not with what you’re wearing. I’d end up half-strangling you. And after that…” An uneven sigh. “I don’t know what I can do.” He lifted his hand away, then let it drop by his side.</p>
<p>“This is the first time for you since…?”</p>
<p>Wesley just nodded, or that was what the movement looked like in the dim light.</p>
<p>Gently, wanting to reassure: “Then we’ll both be finding out what we can do. Look, why don’t I…?” He let go of Wesley’s shirt, took a step back, then shrugged out of his jacket and then his T-shirt, letting them both drop to the floor near the foot of the bed. He was about to move back to Wesley when he decided that he might as well make things as simple as he could; and he sat down on the bed to take off his shoes and socks, and then shucked the rest of his clothes.</p>
<p>It was exciting, suddenly being naked in front of Wesley, even if Wesley couldn’t see him; he was reminded, all over again, that they hardly knew each other. Wesley obviously found it exciting, too: he stepped forward to pull Gunn into a kiss, already starting to breathe heavily again. Gunn groaned at the first touch of Wesley’s body against his bare skin, and groaned again as Wesley’s hand left his shoulder-blade and began to move slowly down his spine; he couldn’t remember another time when he’d felt like this, aware of every inch of his skin.</p>
<p>Wesley was the one who broke the kiss, though he still kept a tight hold on Gunn. “I’m still wearing my shirt.”</p>
<p>“Well… I could do somethin’ ‘bout that if we’d just let go of each other for five seconds.”</p>
<p>“Five seconds?” Wesley made a sound like he was weighing his options, then let go and took a step back. “I’ll be timing you.”</p>
<p>Of course Gunn wasn’t going to hurry like that, not when he’d been looking forward to this all week. If he’d been able to see Wesley properly he would probably have taken even longer - whenever he’d imagined this, he’d given himself long pauses to drink in each new sight, and to tell Wesley what the sight was doing to him - but now it was enough to work steadily downwards, learning Wesley’s body simply from the brush of hair against his knuckles, from Wesley’s shiver as he moved past the edge of the ribcage down to the smooth, yielding skin of Wesley’s stomach. He pulled the shirt out of the waistband, undid the last buttons, then carefully lifted it clear of Wesley’s left shoulder so it could fall across Wesley’s back, then finally pulled it off Wesley’s right arm.</p>
<p>“Should I hang it up?”</p>
<p>A shake of the head. “No. Leave it with yours.”</p>
<p>Gunn reached back without looking and let the shirt fall, then dropped to his knees and started unlacing Wesley’s shoes.</p>
<p>Wesley made to step back. “You don’t have to.”</p>
<p>“You set me a deadline, English. And now you’re tryin’ to get in my way?”</p>
<p>Wesley laughed. “You made me lose count.”</p>
<p>“Get in my way and then blame me. Is that a good start?”</p>
<p>As soon as Wesley had stepped out of his trousers and underwear, Gunn pushed them out of the way, then knelt up, put his hands lightly on the outside of Wesley’s thighs, just below the hips, and then went still, looking up at Wesley naked in the light from the street. The room seemed full, suddenly, with the sound of their breathing.</p>
<p>Gunn couldn’t see much, but he could see enough to wonder why it had taken him so long to want a man like this one. Those long, fine lines... They knew him. They spoke to him. They made him feel unsettled and wanting, and calm and completed, both at once.</p>
<p>And he could also see enough to understand why Wesley wanted the light off. Even a pinned-up sleeve was still there as a sleeve, giving your eye a good part of what it expected to be seeing. But with the shirt gone there was no distraction, no disguise, and yes it was a raw shock to see an arm with nothing on the opposite side, nothing at all.</p>
<p>Wesley must still hate to look in the mirror. Because six months wasn’t long. Not to get used to something so wrong. Wrong, that was, because it shouldn’t have happened, shouldn’t ever happen. Some people would think it was ugly, wrong that way too. Maybe most people would think that. But not Gunn. Right now, he couldn’t imagine how he could find anything about Wesley that wasn’t perfect to him.</p>
<p>“I’m too thin. I know.” Wesley sounded resigned.</p>
<p>Gunn moved his right hand on Wesley’s thigh, stroking hard with his thumb. “That’s kind of what I thought the first time I saw you. But God, have I got used to it! Lean. That’s what I’d call you.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” A satisfied sigh. “I like that.” Wesley pushed his hips towards Gunn, probably more from instinct than asking outright and Gunn didn’t need to know which, because either way he’d still be reacting with the same rush of hunger. Learning the difference for when it did matter – that would come in time.</p>
<p>“I guessed.” He was leaning forward, pulling Wesley closer, and then Wesley’s cock was inside his mouth, deep inside his mouth, and Wesley was crying out, and clutching at his shoulder. Gunn didn’t mean to suck Wesley off, not yet. He just needed to know him, to learn him, to taste him and hold him and be shaken by his pulse. Wesley seemed to understand this very quickly: he became still again, apart from the small choked sounds he made when Gunn flexed his tongue or swallowed.</p>
<p>In the first moments Gunn had thought that he could stay like that for hours, for as long as Wesley would let him, but within a minute all he could think about was the state of his own cock, pulsing exactly in time with Wesley’s, it seemed, and desperate, desperate to be touched. Wesley sighed as Gunn released him and stood up, and then they were pressed hard together, gasping into one another’s mouths, almost as urgent as they’d been at the front door.</p>
<p>“Do you…?” Wesley paused for breath. “Do you still want to go to bed?”</p>
<p>Gunn frowned, struggling to cool his brain enough to understand the question. Bed? Did he want to go to bed? He wanted to feel like this forever - nothing else seemed important. “I don’t - What do you want?”</p>
<p>Slowly: “I think we should. It’ll make it seem real.”</p>
<p>The other half of Gunn’s brain suddenly woke itself up. Not like it’d been drenched with cold water, but interested, with questions of its own. “It doesn’t seem real? I can still feel the size of you in my mouth. How’s it not seem real?”</p>
<p>“You’re still here. You shouldn’t - You didn’t leave when I thought you’d have to. And it’s too much that you’d been thinking about this too. It’s too much to believe.”</p>
<p>“You mean you’d been thinking about us in bed? Us going to bed? Just this evenin’? Or all week, or -?”</p>
<p>Wesley was shaking his head. “I wouldn’t presume. I thought you just… That you must be like that with all your friends. I was just wondering when you’d call me ‘English’ again. And wondering who might be lucky enough to take you to bed.”</p>
<p>A pause while Gunn reshaped some of his memories, especially of the last few hours. “Did you think it was a man?”</p>
<p>“I thought it could be. I thought you might have someone in your crew. You seemed…”</p>
<p>Someone in his crew? A man in his crew? Like the crew would stand for that. But he got a charge out of the idea of Wesley thinking about it. “So your guess was as close as mine was about you and Angel.” He released his hold on Wesley’s back, and took hold instead of the arms of Wesley’s glasses, starting to lift them clear. “Are we going to bed, then, English?”</p>
<p>Wesley got in first, slid over to the far side, near the window, and then sat waiting with his right knee raised and his hand resting on the knee, looking almost as formal as he did in his best suit. Gunn slid in next to him, raised his left knee to the same angle, and reached over to cover Wesley’s hand with his own and pull Wesley’s leg close against his. Wesley sighed and leaned against him, pushing his face against Gunn’s shoulder.</p>
<p>“For a moment there, I thought you were havin’ second thoughts, or somethin’. You looked so serious.”</p>
<p>“No! Oh, no. Just trying to work out how to warn you that… Well, I can’t lie on my left side, for example. That it is going to make a difference.”</p>
<p>Gunn took his hand off Wesley’s knee, moved it slowly down Wesley’s inner thigh. “But you didn’t want us to stay standing up.”</p>
<p>Wesley’s hand was on Gunn’s thigh now, following a similar path. “That’s for something quick in an alley. No, not always, but I don’t want us to act as if we won’t be seeing each other again. If we’ll be doing this again, if you’ll be spending the night, we have to learn what I can do.”</p>
<p>Wesley’s breathing had gotten more and more uneven as their hands had moved steadily lower, and then they finally took hold of one another, and it was many minutes before Gunn could really form a thought about what Wesley had said, let alone put that thought into words. The angle between hand and cock was awkward, for both of them, so there were many things that neither of them could do, but it wasn’t about proving anything to do with technique, it was about paying attention - noticing, and remembering, and responding. It was a conversation, and they matched and pleased one another in here just as well as they did out there over beer and pizza.</p>
<p>“This isn’t really a fair test of what you can do.”</p>
<p>“I’m prepared to cheat. Sometimes.”</p>
<p>“Wesley. I want to kiss you all over. The backs of your knees, everything. But if I’ve got all night to do that, then right now I wanna lie down with you and hold you tight as I can and I wanna feel you come. We can make it better next time but for now I wanna have that.”</p>
<p>Wesley immediately nodded and started disentangling his arm and then sliding down to lie on his back. Gunn stretched out on top, fitted his mouth to Wesley’s, then reached down to work his right hand between their stomachs and wrap it around both cocks.</p>
<p>Wesley came first. Gunn felt the gathering, was ready for the frozen stillness, the pleading, astonished moan, the sudden hot pulse against his skin. But he wasn’t quite ready for his own feeling of astonishment - that he and this man could have nothing in common, could hardly know each other, and yet decide to do this together, and become closer in a few minutes than if they’d been friends for ten years.</p>
<p>Wesley was the first to speak afterwards. Slowly, voice still roughened: “Definitely the right thing to do.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Oh, yeah.” A long sigh. “You want me to move?”</p>
<p>“Some time in the next half hour, maybe. You’re a good weight. Not too thin.”</p>
<p>“Not lean, that’s for sure.” Gunn raised himself enough that they could kiss again - and the kiss felt different to him from all the kisses they’d had before: more casual, but much more intimate. Their bodies knew that they had rights to one another now; they’d earned them, and here was Gunn’s first taste of that difference.</p>
<p>“Guess I should call my crew. Before they try to call me.”</p>
<p>“They know where you are?”</p>
<p>“Nah. Got my cellphone. But I’m always tellin’ ‘em how they gotta check in. So we know we can set the defences for the night. I made the rules, so… Haven’t had a chance before, t’set an example.”</p>
<p>“Because you always know when you’re going to be out all night?”</p>
<p>“Pretty much.” In fact, he hadn’t dated anyone - not staying-the-night dated - since the vampires moved in. Since Denise. But those kinds of details could wait for another night. “I’ll make the call next door, OK?” He started getting out of bed.</p>
<p>“OK.” Wesley’s voice was quiet, almost a question; he must be wondering what Gunn didn’t want him to hear. Gunn wasn’t planning on saying anything beyond the fact that he wouldn’t be back until morning, but for now it just didn’t feel right to talk to his crew while he was naked in the same room as Wesley, while Wesley was lying in the bed where they’d had sex. Because that would make it seem like it wasn’t a big deal - and it was a big deal to him, and it would be a very big deal to his crew. He would explain to Wesley, but not tonight. He just didn’t want to get into any of that tonight.</p>
<p>Eladio answered the phone, and Gunn told him as planned that that he wouldn’t be back until morning. Eladio didn’t ask where he was, though Vince or Dean would have, and would have been told that it was none of their business. Gunn went to the kitchen to get a couple of beers from the fridge, and returned to find that Wesley was still lying there with the covers half-off, but with his arm now stretched out across the sheet.</p>
<p>“D’you wanna beer? Hope so, ‘cos I already opened them.”</p>
<p>Wesley sat up quickly - very quickly, suddenly very alert. “You went to the fridge?” Definitely alert, almost alarmed. Was he worried that Gunn might have disturbed Angel somehow, that Angel might have come out of his room and found Gunn wandering around naked and sticky? But wouldn’t the phone call be more likely to wake Angel, not someone fetching beers?</p>
<p>“I shut the door ‘n’ everythin’. Do you want one? If we’re gonna talk all night.”</p>
<p>Wesley suddenly smiled and relaxed, and held out his hand. “Not all night. Unless you can talk while you’re kissing the back of my knee.”</p>
<p>Gunn had just got settled with his left arm around Wesley’s waist, when Wesley said, “Actually… Could you hand me my glasses and put the bedside light on?”</p>
<p>“Sure. What d’you need to check?”</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t reply until he had his glasses on, and until he’d looked at Gunn for what seemed like a minute. “Exactly how lucky I am. I always want to be able to see you. From now on.”</p>
<p>“Yeah?” Gunn felt like he couldn’t stop smiling. “That’ll be good. Does this mean that you… That you’re OK about -”</p>
<p>Wesley was shaking his head. “No. Not really. I don’t know how we…” A sigh. “Angel… When I first came out of hospital, before we knew each other well enough to know how to - He had this way of managing not to see it. Maybe more for his own sake than for mine, but it helped. And…” Another sigh, harsher. “I have these things I have to do to get dressed. I couldn’t bear anyone to watch. In the morning, I’ll have to ask you to look away.”</p>
<p>“You got it. You c’n ask me to do anythin’. Don’t havta tell me why.”</p>
<p>“Charles. Thank you.”</p>
<p>They got settled again and drank for a while in silence, clearly both enjoying the sight of each other, and of their bodies against one another. Gunn was thinking that, with the way he felt now, he didn’t ever want to have sex with anyone else. Don’t want to have his arm around any other waist. Feel any hand except Wesley’s on his thigh. Still barely knew this man but right now… If he wasn’t in love with him, then he didn’t know what love would feel like, how a heart or a body could manage to feel anything more than this.</p>
<p>So what were they going to do? If they both felt the same – and Gunn thought they did – and if they still had those feelings in a week or a month? How much were they going to let it change their lives?</p>
<p>“What will Angel think of me stayin’ the night? Will it freak him out? Freak him further out, guess I should say.”</p>
<p>“I - I don’t -” A sigh and a long pause. “I think that’s his problem.”</p>
<p>“You think he’ll have a problem with it?”</p>
<p>“I have no idea. But he’s not in a good position to question anyone else’s choices. And it’s none of his business.”</p>
<p>“And you’re gonna tell him that?”</p>
<p>“Yes. Ten or twenty times, if necessary.” Angel had made some bad choices? Gunn was curious, but he’d ask some other time; he and Wesley must have a hundred better things to talk about tonight than Angel. Well, make that ninety-nine, because the next thing Wesley said was: “So when was the first time you made me laugh?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “When I asked if you and Angel were ‘dating’.” Not that he would have used that word at the time if he had managed to complete any of his sentences, but he used it now because he wanted to make the whole idea ridiculous. Wesley was his. Even if the rival was only there in his own imagination, Wesley was his.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes. That time.” A fond memory for Wesley, clear in the tone of his voice.</p>
<p>“So he’s completely straight, is he?”</p>
<p>Thoughtful: “I don’t know that Angel is ‘completely’ anything. As far as that goes, he was involved with a girl when I first met him. A classmate of Cordelia’s.”</p>
<p>“Was that how the two of you met?”</p>
<p>“More or less.”</p>
<p>Some time later, Gunn said, “I can’t get over the idea you’d noticed me too. Like you’d even put in time wonderin’ who I was dating. I’d been lookin’ for anythin’, for you to give any sign I might have a chance with you. And I still swear I got nothin’. I mean, way you talked about Cordy! And then all that about Susan Sarandon and Laura Dern. You couldn’t’ve given me one clue?”</p>
<p>“That would have meant that I was hoping. And I wasn’t. I couldn’t. So I told myself to forget about it and just look forward to the evening. Which I did.”</p>
<p>“Man. I couldn’t forget about it. I had to try. Was prepared to wait a few weeks. Y’know, pickin’ up clues. But I wasn’t gonna forget about it till I knew I had to.”</p>
<p>Slowly: “I can scarcely imagine doing that. Have you always found it easy, making that first move with someone?”</p>
<p>“Didn’t say it was easy. Not with you. But, yeah, been told no often enough I know it won’t kill me.”</p>
<p>“No? People say no to you?” Disbelieving.</p>
<p>“Strange, huh? Well, you said no to Cordy.”</p>
<p>A groan. “That’s not quite -”</p>
<p>Gunn interrupted, firmly. “That’s gonna be my version. And how she came to L.A. to try to forget you. I’d have to wish her luck with that.”</p>
<p>Wesley laughed so hard he nearly spilled his beer. “Yes. I may borrow that version when you’re not using it. I do like your ideas about my sex life. Maybe we should just decide that they’re all true.”</p>
<p>“If you can promise me Angel’s gonna know he’s met his match, then sure.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>When Gunn woke the next morning, he knew straight away where he was, whose bed, and God, what a wonderful fact to wake up to. He was facing away from Wesley and their bodies weren’t touching, so he rolled over, arm reaching out - and found that Wesley was sitting up in bed, and wearing a robe that felt cool and thin.</p>
<p>“You up already? What time is it?”</p>
<p>“It’s about nine. I had to go and check on Angel.”</p>
<p>Gunn hauled himself upright. “You tell him about us? How’d he take it?”</p>
<p>“He took it very well.” A shrug. “In fact, he insisted I’d already told him. He said he already knew when he met you last night.”</p>
<p>“Oh. What you think that’s about?”</p>
<p>“It’s about the damage to his brain. There’s nothing to read into it. He does strange things with information.”</p>
<p>“OK. You had a shower too? Your hair’s still damp.”</p>
<p>“I usually get dressed before I check on him in the mornings. But that didn’t seem right when you were still asleep.”</p>
<p>“What about shaving?” Gunn smiled, and reached out to place his hand on Wesley’s face and rub his thumb along Wesley’s chin. “Just wondering how long each morning I’ll get to see you with the stubble.”</p>
<p>Wesley smiled back, and pushed against Gunn’s hand. “You like stubble?”</p>
<p>“I like you. I like every new thing about you I couldn’t’ve guessed. This makes you look so different. ‘n’ I could already stare at you for hours.”</p>
<p>“Different how?”</p>
<p>Years younger. And hopeful. Innocent, kind of. Like he’d never been hurt. And his mouth… Against the stubble his mouth looked so red and full. It looked so tender.</p>
<p>Gunn had been horny from the moment he’d woken up: a steady, all-over horny, no real focus, happy just to simmer. But looking at Wesley’s mouth, thinking the words to describe it, and suddenly Gunn was burning up with wanting to fuck that mouth. Not just fuck it but claim it, make it know there was only one cock in the world that could ever be real to it. God, so fierce, the wanting so fierce Gunn was shocked he could feel it - like it came from nowhere, like it came from someone else. He tried to push the feeling down, tried just to feel how he had when he first woke up.</p>
<p>“Oh, different like... Not lookin’ anythin’ like an accountant. More like how I’d’ve imagined a demon expert would look. If you’d asked me before I saw you at work in your suit. With your books. Y’know, doin’ it your way. ‘s kinda sexy, though, t’see that you’re both.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked shy and pleased and uncertain, and Gunn caught his breath as the blood slammed into his cock, thought he might’ve rocked like he’d been punched. His hand had started to shake and he took it away from Wesley’s face, not trusting himself now to touch Wesley.</p>
<p>Course this wasn’t from nowhere. Course it came from him. Was it...? Was it Wesley looking different, but acting the same? Seeing Wesley gone distant, every line in his face a warning to keep away, that you couldn’t know him? Seeing that and needing to break through, needing it fierce. And right to need it, ‘cos when he was through Wesley would look at him like he was now: like he was thinking this was too good, he couldn’t believe it, he hadn’t let himself hope. Looking at Gunn like that, while his face was still giving the same warning to everyone else in the world. So Gunn was hooked, through his cock, his heart, his throat. And Wesley had no idea, because Wesley expected nothing.</p>
<p>“As long as you like the accountant, too. Because that’s the only part I can ever see. I mean, sitting here, I was never going to do anything except watch you sleeping. But I still had to bring my Sanskrit Grammar in with me, pretend it was an ordinary day. The demon expert would have done better.”</p>
<p>The book was open face-downwards in Wesley’s lap. Gunn touched the spine, and struggled to keep his voice even. “Is this for the translation? The one you have to finish today?”</p>
<p>“Yes, I’ve been -” Wesley broke off, and stared at him, frowning. “What’s wrong? You sound as if you’re in pain.”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head, made his best try at casual, a grin, even. “It’s the stubble. Got me so hard, so fast, I could - Too hard. Want to take you.” He closed his eyes, swallowed. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to…”</p>
<p>“You think I’ll be worried that you want me?”</p>
<p>“Like this, yeah. The moment you touched me, I’d be - I’d be so far past bein’ able to think about you. It’d be bad. Let me deal with it.”</p>
<p>“No.” Steely. Ice-cold. Another aspect of Wesley. Another aspect Gunn hadn’t suspected until it was looking right at him. “Not under my roof. Will you take my mouth or do you need to fuck me?”</p>
<p>Gunn gave a raw cry, clawed back the covers, and seized himself, desperate - now beyond wanting anything specific, even beyond wanting Wesley, aware of little except the furnace between his legs. He was vaguely aware of Wesley crouched over him, trying to pull his hand away, get some purchase on his bucking hips, but it would have taken maybe three men, each with two strong arms, to make his hips and his hand stop what they were doing.</p>
<p>By the time it was over, he had slid halfway down the bed. He lay, gasping and quivering, while Wesley slowly licked the come from his belly - feeling the rasp of stubble and the cold tracing of glass and metal along with soft, liquid warmth, and feeling like he was the one who had been claimed, and thoroughly, thoroughly fucked.</p>
<p>They kissed for a long time, while Gunn’s pulse slowed to the same steady pace as Wesley’s. “What about you? What do you need? I’ve never done that with a man. Fucking. Not yet.”</p>
<p>Wesley was shaking his head. “It can wait. Everything. Until this evening. I mean, I can wait. For whatever we’re both in the mood for. This evening. I have to deliver the translation before five. So… any time after six?”</p>
<p>“OK, I’ll -” Gunn swore and banged his head hard, twice, back against the pillow. “I’m on patrol. And tomorrow, too. Every night except Tuesdays and Fridays.”</p>
<p>“What time do you finish?”</p>
<p>“Two? Three? Depends what’s out there. Oh, damn!”</p>
<p>“What’s the matter? Come over when you’re finished.”</p>
<p>“And make you wait up like that? When it could be any time? You’ve got work, you’ve got Angel. You can’t do that every night.”</p>
<p>“Then why don’t you call when you’re ready to come over? I’m a light sleeper. I’ll be awake then when you arrive. Except…” A sudden frown. “If Angel gets a tip-off and we have to go out. If I don’t answer after fifteen rings or more, that’s what’s happened.”</p>
<p>“Then I’ll call the next morning. Maybe meet you for lunch? If Angel’s OK to be left that long.”</p>
<p>Gunn left the apartment just after ten, after he’d had a shower and shared a coffee with Wesley. He didn’t go straight back to the base, but stopped at the same diner, partly to give himself more time, but mostly because he still needed breakfast. Wesley had nothing but the plainest vanilla yogurts, and Gunn needed something sweet in the morning, something with carbs. He sat in the same window booth as he had the previous week and ordered coffee and apple pie, same as then too – wanting the same there, to mark how everything else was different. Wesley had said yes, and everything, everything was different.</p>
<p>When the pie arrived, Gunn sank his fork into it, broke off a good chunk - and then left the fork on the plate, left his coffee to go cold. What was food when he could live for a month on this sizzling, amazed, excited feeling? The feeling seemed larger than he was, all the time bubbling up right in the core of him, and pushing out and up, up to his throat. And his throat... His throat was glowing with remembering the shape of Wesley in his mouth; and it was like the memories were just seconds old, not hours. Gunn sat and stared out the window, and found he couldn’t stop smiling.</p>
<p>Once he was back at the base, he did managed to act normally around his crew. Not difficult, really, since all he had to do was imagine how they’d react if they knew exactly why he was smiling. The day had its quiet moments, and on an ordinary day he would have had ten different ideas for filling the quiet, depending on who was around; and none of the ideas would have involved taking the truck out and parking a few blocks away, and sitting for half an hour doing nothing but be in love with Wesley.</p>
<p>The third quiet time was around seven in the evening, and he knew, driving back, that it would be the last one that day. From here on it was the evening meal, then the week’s finances, then preparation for patrol, and then out in the truck again, but not alone, not able to stop and close his eyes and see his skin against Wesley’s – this picture, and that picture, and this moment – and oh how they were different, and how well they fit. But after patrol… He’d be able to go back to Wesley’s bed, after patrol.</p>
<p>Unless Angel got a tip-off, and Wesley had to go out.</p>
<p>The idea made Gunn go cold, froze the bubbling inside him, and twisted the frozen shards. A night alone in his own bed: ordinary the day before, welcome rest at the end of a full day; now, unnatural, hardly bearable. He wouldn’t go to bed alone, if he couldn’t go with Wesley; he’d spend the night in the truck outside their apartment, not waiting for him even, just needing to be there. What would Wesley think, though, if he did come back and find Gunn waiting? Would he think Gunn was crazy, scary crazy?</p>
<p>No. No, Wesley would understand. Wesley felt the same, didn’t he? “Not under my roof.” That was the same feeling. They had to be together, they had to be close. That fierce, for both of them.</p>
<p>But what if it was a bad tip-off, one of those that meant Angel had to be locked in? Wesley would call, wouldn’t he? Ask for help. He wouldn’t try to go out on his own? The ache of need inside Gunn turned suddenly into the sharp pain of real fear. Wesley might. He might go out on his own. He must have done it in the past, because Angel had got like that before, hadn’t he?</p>
<p>Yes, he’d gone out on his own and he’d come back. Because he was tough, and smart, and Angel had taught him well. And Gunn already knew that Wesley was smart enough to ask for help when he needed it.</p>
<p>But this time Wesley knew that Gunn would be on patrol. That might stop him from asking, if he thought the crew might be doing something as important as the tip-off. Gunn should have thought of that, he should have told Wesley straight away that the patrol didn’t make any difference, that he could call any time. Well, he’d tell him now.</p>
<p>Gunn counted at least twenty rings before Wesley’s phone was picked up.</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“Angel. Uh… It’s Charles. Is Wesley there?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“Do you know when he’ll be back? Do you know where he’s gone?”</p>
<p>A long pause. “Wesley comes back.”</p>
<p>“That’s right. Did he take his sword? Or his axe? Did you have a tip-off?”</p>
<p>Another pause, even longer. “He was late.”</p>
<p>“Late? For the tip-off?” Then more slowly: “Or do you mean he was late with the translation? Is he out delivering his translation?”</p>
<p>“When he comes back.”</p>
<p>Gunn spent at least ten seconds trying to make sense of Angel’s reply, then gave up. “Can I leave a message for him? Can you write a message down?”</p>
<p>“Write a message?”</p>
<p>“Yes. Angel, please tell Wesley he can always call me if he needs help. It doesn’t matter if I’m on patrol.” Gunn couldn’t hear any sounds of writing. “Will you be able to tell Wesley that?”</p>
<p>“Tell Wesley?”</p>
<p>“Tell him to call me tonight if he needs help. Please, Angel, will you write it down? Show Wesley the message when he comes back.”</p>
<p>A sound that might have been a yes, and then Angel hung up. OK. So the chances of Angel passing the message on were obviously zero. But he might still tell Wesley that Gunn had called; and then Wesley would probably call back.</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t call back, and Gunn spent the next few hours feeling as distracted as Wesley had seemed a week ago after they’d killed the Lurgan. All Gunn’s attention was on that apartment in Inglewood - like Wesley’s must have been - and he was willing Wesley to be there, almost praying for it. Let Wesley be there, safe. And let Wesley be there, waiting for him.</p>
<p>Gunn had promised himself at the start of patrol that he’d hold out until at least two a.m., and he kept that promise. He got the team back to base, told them as they were getting out of the truck that he would be away for the night, and then drove straight out again.</p>
<p>Wesley answered before the phone had even finished its first ring. “Charles. I got your message. Are you on your way?”</p>
<p>“Fifteen minutes.”</p>
<p>Wesley must have been watching for the truck, because he was standing in the doorway, waiting. Once they were inside the apartment, they stood just looking at one another for long moments - the space of four breaths? five? - and then they reached out for one another. Gunn had been looking forward to this all day, remembering and imagining, but from the first touch, Wesley’s lips so soft, opening so slowly, he realised he’d been remembering almost nothing of how it really felt to be Wesley’s lover. His mind, his imagination couldn’t get close to this: the reality of Wesley here, now, with the night ahead and neither of them knowing what would happen between them. Would he ever learn to remember? Or would he be amazed like this every time?</p>
<p>Wesley was in his robe, but he hadn’t gone to bed yet; he’d been sitting up, reading and waiting. The robe was for speed. He unfastened it and shrugged out of it as soon as they were in the bedroom, and then they both took their time over undressing Gunn.</p>
<p>“Y’know, I can’t believe Angel gave you the message. Had he written it down?” They had just got into bed, and were sitting, half-turned towards one another.</p>
<p>“I think he started to. He’d filled two pages of my notepad with drawings of swords and axes by the time I got back. I knew something had happened. So it was a matter of asking questions until I found the right one. Or what seemed like the right one. You had called, hadn’t you, to make it clear that I could call you for help tonight if Angel got a tip-off?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. I thought, since it was the first night you knew I was on patrol…”</p>
<p>“That’s what I guessed. Thank you.” A brief pause. “I’m surprised Angel picked up the phone. It must have been a strange conversation.”</p>
<p>“Conversation not really the word. He said you were late, though. Was that with your translation?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “I couldn’t concentrate. All I wanted to think about was you. Especially… wondering what we would be in the mood for tonight.” Wesley’s voice had suddenly gotten rougher. “Do you want to fuck?”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head. “I’m not ready. I mean, I do. Hearing you talk about it, God, yes. But -” He swallowed. “Do you like it? Hasn’t it gotta hurt?”</p>
<p>“It’s not the easiest thing to get used to. I don’t often want it. But I do with you. When you’re ready.”</p>
<p>“I haven’t been with that many men.”</p>
<p>“No, neither have I.” A half-smile and a raised eyebrow. “Both women and men seem to find me equally resistible.”</p>
<p>“I don’t believe that. I think you just never noticed them comin’ on to you. I bet you picked up the strangest ideas about how people behave with their friends.”</p>
<p>They both laughed, then Wesley said, “So what are you usually in the mood for, when you do go with men?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged, then said slowly, “To find out what he’s like, I guess. If he feels the way he looks he would. See what his style is - how it fits in with the rest of him. Usually seems to end up with us suckin’ each other off, though. What about you?”</p>
<p>A sigh. “When I’m in the middle of a ridiculous crush on a dashing man who doesn’t seem to know I exist, I’m always in the mood for something slow and serious. However, the ones who do notice I exist are always in the mood for the opposite - which is better than nothing, of course. But did you ever come away wondering if he’d done it for a bet?”</p>
<p>“A bet? With you? Means you’re paranoid and you never looked in a mirror. Or… Yeah, could be you’ve met some real shitheads in your time.” Wesley did look easy to hurt, had to admit. Sort of look that might bring out the worst in a lot of people.</p>
<p>Wesley smiled. “A few, but probably not like that. If it helps, I think I’m less paranoid than I used to be.”</p>
<p>“But you still like it slow and serious?”</p>
<p>“I certainly did last night. Though it was this morning that really stopped me concentrating on the translation.”</p>
<p>“Will you settle for slow and serious tonight?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “Not ‘settle’.” A pause. “I - Can we try it without speaking? If that’s not too strange. Words… Sometimes they don’t know how to be serious, but touch…” He knelt up, laid his hand on Gunn’s left cheek, then leaned forward to press his lips against the other cheek. A few seconds only, then he drew back and looked at Gunn, eyebrows raised, slightly uncertain. Gunn nodded, and brought his hands up to touch his fingertips to his own lips and to Wesley’s and then they moved into a kiss, and Gunn started to discover just how serious Wesley had meant, and how slow.</p>
<p>After it was over, Gunn found that it was a long time before he even wanted to speak. Felt like their silence was a shield held over the two of them, and he didn’t want to push it aside.</p>
<p>Finally, though: “I’ve never done that before. Not on purpose.”</p>
<p>Wesley drew a deep sigh. “Neither have I. When I thought about it before, when I was having one of my crushes, it was… I’d never really talked to them, anyway. I hadn’t thought the difference it would make, with someone I could talk to.”</p>
<p>“What difference did it make?”</p>
<p>“I think we could do this every night forever. And still be amazed by one another.” A sigh. “I’d say there’s a good chance we’re in love, except I don’t really believe it can happen this quickly.”</p>
<p>Gunn raised himself on an elbow and looked down at Wesley, smiling slightly. “That the most you’ll ever bring yourself to say?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded, with a similar smile. “Until I’ve allowed myself enough time to be sure. You can wait five years, can’t you?”</p>
<p>“Five years of this?” Gunn put his fingertips to Wesley’s lips, then ran them down Wesley’s throat to his chest, while Wesley arched his head back and sighed. “I dunno... You’re askin’ a lot, man.”</p>
<p>They laughed, and kissed, then returned for a while to their silence.</p>
<p>Wesley was the one who spoke next. “Have you been in love with a man before? Is it something you look for? With men?”</p>
<p>“I was in love with my best friend when I was sixteen, seventeen. Pretty standard, I guess. Luke. Woulda done anything for him. We fooled around a coupla times. But for him it was just somethin’ to do if he didn’t have a real date. And I guess I let him think it was the same for me. And then we grew apart, anyway. Used to be, every new thing, it almost didn’t count till I’d been able to talk it over with him.” Gunn shrugged. “And then, two years later, and it feels like a chore catchin’ him up on the last six months. But he was the first person where I thought everything about him was wonderful: his eyebrows, sound of his voice, way he wore his clothes. Shape of his head. Most of the men I’ve been with, they’ve had something of him.”</p>
<p>“Was he black, Luke? I’m just assuming.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. And all the others. And yours were all white?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“I guess that’s kinda interesting. So what about you? Bein’ in love with a man, I mean?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “Nothing real. Nothing more than my stupid crushes. Nothing I ever did anything about. The first few times I thought I was in love, but…” A deep sigh. “It was just what I wanted to think. I can see that now.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley had bought a selection of doughnut-holes for Gunn’s breakfast. “You said you needed something sweet, and I’m afraid I made my choice in the end according to the visible amount of sugar. I hope there’s something in there that’ll feel like a proper breakfast to you.”</p>
<p>“Oh, man.” Gunn ate two straight away, then took a drink of coffee and licked his fingers a couple of times. “Y’didn’t just choose sugar, you chose powdered sugar. That’s a jump-start. Swear it goes into my blood right through my taste-buds.”</p>
<p>“Is that what you’d usually have?” Wesley was having one of his vanilla yogurts. “Or is there something else you’d like even more?”</p>
<p>“Usually have some kind of Danish. If it’s a really good Danish then it feels like it’s three kinds of sweet in one. The filling’s gooey so you could almost drink it, but then the pastry’s got a crunch to it. And on top of that there’s icing!”</p>
<p>Wesley was smiling at him, obviously amused. “You’ll have to show me what to look for. Do you think a person could judge how good a Danish was without ever having to eat one?”</p>
<p>“I’ll eat almost anything with icing and enjoy it. Soon’s I find a bakery that gets the filling and the pastry just right, they seem to go out of business. Get me somethin’ with icin’. I’ll be happy.”</p>
<p>“What about powdered sugar? What else do you like with powdered sugar? Because I like…” Wesley stepped forward, gaze fixed on Gunn’s mouth, and raised his hand to brush his fingertips lightly along the lower edge of Gunn’s bottom lip. Gunn opened his mouth, touched his tongue to Wesley’s fingertips, and tasted sugar.</p>
<p>“You like messy eaters? Wouldn’t have guessed.”</p>
<p>“You look…” Wesley’s gaze moved back and forth between Gunn’s eyes and mouth. Gunn could see him working hard not to smile – but he was failing.</p>
<p>“I look…?”</p>
<p>Wesley’s eyes were gleaming with a weird kind of innocent wickedness. He caught his lower lip in his teeth, then suddenly released it and gave one of his half-smiles. With a quirk of his eyebrows, almost in a whisper: “ ‘Sugarlips’.”</p>
<p>Stern: “Well.” Gunn put his hands out to take Wesley by the waist, and pulled him close. “I might’ve let you get away with that if I thought you meant anythin’ good by it. But since you already told me…”</p>
<p>Wesley interrupted him. “You’ll make me eat my words?” And then Wesley’s lips were on his lips, and Wesley’s tongue was pressing sweetness onto his tongue. The kiss continued long after all of the sugar was gone.</p>
<p>“So… You gonna have to eat ten cans of anchovies now? T’get your system back into balance?”</p>
<p>“Five cans. I think I got you to eat most of it. Of course, next time you might be more determined. Do you think I should prepare for twenty cans?”</p>
<p>“Probably. Depends exactly what words I have to make you eat.”</p>
<p>“Well…” Again, that gleam of wickedness that looked like it was a completely new expression for Wesley’s face. “I know quite a lot of words. What if the next time I say it in Ossetic? Or proto-Bantu?”</p>
<p>“Don’t fool y’rself, Wesley. You’re always gonna get that look right before you say it. I’ll know. I’ll always know.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked thoughtful. “I think I can get rid of the look. If I practise in front of the mirror for a day or two.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, you do that. While I’m teachin’ myself the words for ‘sugarlips’ in every language you know.”</p>
<p>“Except for Tifinagh, obviously. Where there’s no word for sugar. For anything sweet. Or Dirkou, where there’s -”</p>
<p>“No word for lips, right? Now, do I ever wanna hear you speak that?”</p>
<p>“You need to be able to rub things that we don’t have. I can read it. Some of it. But I don’t really know what it’s supposed to sound like.”</p>
<p>“You serious now?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “I had to learn some for a case we had a few months ago. I’ll have forgotten most of it in another few months. We did manage to communicate, though. It was interesting.”</p>
<p>“Did you get paid?”</p>
<p>“We did. Eventually.”</p>
<p>“Enough?”</p>
<p>“I think so.”</p>
<p>“Don’t get rid of the look, English. Don’t practise. But how much d’you really not like sugar?”</p>
<p>Wesley smiled. “You were just right. You made me want more, when I usually want less.”</p>
<p>“More.” On a long, wondering sigh, and then they were kissing again. Gunn couldn’t imagine how he was going to make himself leave. He was teaching his first self-defence class at Anne’s shelter. And Angel was going to want to come out sometime, get something to eat. But letting go of Wesley, stepping away from Wesley… Not fair to expect him to. Just not fair.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Gunn arrived at base that morning knowing that he was going to leave his crew. He had been making the decision steadily over the last day, since the previous morning when he’d woken up with Wesley for the first time. Most of that process hadn’t been conscious, but when he had woken up that morning, with Wesley, still asleep, fitted loosely along the length of his back, he’d found the decision there, fully-made, and he knew exactly how it had been put together.</p>
<p>The only way he could stay with the crew would be if they could accept Wesley, him and Wesley, and accept the fact that he would always put Wesley first now. If Wesley called, needing help with a case, with one of Angel’s tip-offs, then Gunn was gone, whatever the crew had been doing; he would be useless to the crew, from the moment he got that call. Course they wouldn’t accept that, what gang would? They needed a leader they could trust. A leader they could be proud of. Yeah, if they met Wesley one-on-one, most of them would end up liking him, enough to admit - in private - that he had his own kind of style, they could sort of see how he was right for Gunn. But in public… Wesley was a curse on the crew, impossible for them to face down. Their leader had chosen a freak. And someone so far from being a part of their world, you’d have to think that Gunn had looked at all the crew and decided he wanted the opposite. Gunn was better than any of them at putting on a front, toughing things out, and he couldn’t think of any way for them to handle it; there wasn’t enough front, not in the whole of L.A., to tough out a disaster like Wesley. Gunn would have to go.</p>
<p>Not really a big deal. The crew would be fine; they’d take care of each other, he’d shown them how. Wesley needed him more; and he needed more of Wesley.</p>
<p>He didn’t know where he’d go, or when, couldn’t see much beyond the ugly showdown that was surely coming. Vince would get in there first, with Elton as his chorus; he’d been looking for a chance, Gunn had seen that months back. Best just to choose a day, call them together and tell them, not wait for Vince to bring the fight to him. And Vince would be expecting a fight, would be relying on it, even. But there was nothing Gunn needed to keep, nothing for him to fight about. It was over. Already over. No matter what they said about him, about Wesley, he should just walk away.</p>
<p>Next week, maybe. He might tell them next week. He needed to explain things to Wesley first, because he knew Wesley had no idea what was brewing with Gunn and the crew, and that wasn’t something you should learn about afterwards. Wesley should know Gunn had already decided to leave, that he’d decided it before the showdown, and that the decision had been easy. And Gunn wanted a change to talk properly with Wesley about how they were going to arrange things once Gunn was free of his crew; which meant, really, how they were going to arrange things around Angel. How much of Wesley’s time did Angel need each day, to help him keep hold of who he was? And how much did it disturb him, to have a stranger in the apartment? Angel might need months before he could cope with Gunn being there for the entire day. Wesley would want a chance to plan how to deal with Angel, of course he would.</p>
<p>Gunn found himself thinking a lot about Alonna as he did his rounds of the base that morning. Thinking about Alonna, and also suddenly seeing everything and everyone almost with the eyes of a stranger. Such a difference it made, to know he’d be leaving all this in a matter of days. Would he have made a different decision if Alonna was still here? Would he even have got to the point of making friends with Wesley? Not that Alonna would have warned him off Wesley or anything, but so many things would have to be different, for her to be there; made it hard to just wonder what she would think or want. But if everything had happened with Wesley in the same way, would he have told her about Wesley by now, and about Angel and all the things that Wesley shouldn’t have to face alone? Well, she would have asked by now, where he had spent the last two nights. Would she understand? Would she make it easy for him to leave? Or try to make it impossible? If she’d guessed about him and Luke, or any of the other men, she’d never said.</p>
<p>She’d probably tell him he wasn’t thinking straight, he was taking things way too fast. Maybe this Wesley was worth leaving the crew for, but how could he know that? What did a few fights with demons, a few beers, a few nights in bed really teach you about a man? They had so little in common – and maybe that was even all there was to the thrill they were gettin’ from each other. Nothing to do with love, with fitting well – just the kick of something so new, that you’d never thought you’d be doing. There might even have been a hundred warning signs already, all saying this was never gonna work, and all missed because they didn’t understand each other well enough even to read those signs.</p>
<p>Yeah it was fast, Gunn knew that. Be better if they could give themselves a couple of months, at least, before making any big decisions. Easy to say that: “take it slow”. Easy if there weren’t the tip-offs, there wasn’t Angel. If Wesley was someone he could show to the crew, casually, without lying, bring to the base once in a while on their way to or from a date. Like he had with Denise. But since Wesley was what he was – and Angel, and the crew – Gunn was looking at just days to decide between them.</p>
<p>He didn’t know Wesley. Hardly at all. But there was only one way to find out how real it was, whatever was happening between them, and he wasn’t gonna let that go, not for anythin’. Not for anyone.</p>
<p>If he’d said that to Alonna she would have told him outright that he was thinkin’ with his dick. He was tryin’ to make it sound like one of his great, cool, help-everyone projects but the real reason he was leavin’ all his friends and everythin’ he’d worked for was his dick. ‘cos his dick had somehow taken a fancy to this English guy’s body.</p>
<p>So what if it had? If he could tell his dick who to like he wouldn’t have decided any different. Wesley was a good, brave man. Even if things didn’t really work out for the two of them, they’d still manage to do some good. Gunn would still be doing what he believed in. He didn’t know if it was the best choice, like the perfect choice, but you couldn’t ever know that. But he knew it was a good choice: not stupid, not a mistake. He might not have been able to convince Alonna just by telling her, but after enough time she would have seen for herself.</p>
<p>Dean and George were giving the self-defence class with Gunn that afternoon at Anne’s shelter. Afterwards, when they were having a soda with Anne in the kitchen, Dean said, “And Gunn’s got a new honey. Who we haven’t met yet. Takes off every night. Including tonight, right? When you even gonna tell us where you’re going?”</p>
<p>“When it’s any of your business. Which looks like bein’ never. You know my cell phone. You know I don’t turn it off.”</p>
<p>George said, “Never? We’re never gonna meet her? What’s she scared of? South Central? Or a bit of dust?”</p>
<p>“Still none of your business.”</p>
<p>George said, “I know! It’s Julia Roberts, isn’t it?” And he and Dean fell about laughing, and then started swapping names. Gunn shrugged at Anne and let them get on with it, waiting for Cordy’s name to appear, and wondering if he’d be able to keep himself from reacting. But they gave up the joke after just a few film stars, and didn’t move on to TV.</p>
<p>As Anne was walking them to the door, she turned to Gunn and said, “How’s that English demon guy? Have you seen him since?”</p>
<p>“He’s good.” Gunn could hear the hushed tenderness in his own voice, quite beyond his control. But Anne just nodded, barely interested, and the others hadn’t even been listening.</p>
<p>Gunn brought his team back from patrol shortly before three, and this time he did more than his fair share of stowing the weapons before he called Wesley; he hadn’t left the crew yet, and he shouldn’t start to act like he had.</p>
<p>Wesley took eight rings to answer. “Charles?” Breathless. Wesley must have been asleep.</p>
<p>“We’ve finished patrol.”</p>
<p>“Fifteen minutes?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Or less.” Gunn broke the connection and put the phone back in his pocket. “Good patrol, guys. See you tomorrow morning.”</p>
<p>“Where the hell you goin’, man?” Eladio, sounding amused, and not like he was expecting an answer. Gunn just raised a hand, taking his leave, and walked out of the weapons room without turning around.</p>
<p>“Haven’t you heard? She’s none of our business. Not seeing as he never turns his cell phone off.” Vince, not amused at all.</p>
<p>So they’d been talking. Next thing they’d be tailing him. Gunn shrugged, and carried on down the corridor. Walking away. He’d already made this decision. He was walking away.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Gunn woke in the night needing to go to the bathroom, but when he opened the bedroom door, he saw immediately that Angel was in the living-room, and he closed the door again, almost by reflex. Angel had been crouched down by the bookcase next to the window, must have been reading the titles in the light that came through the open door of his room.</p>
<p>Gunn wondered if Angel had heard the opening and closing of Wesley’s door, wondered if he himself would hear Angel returning to his room, so he would know when it was safe to go out. Then he shook his head sharply. Safe to go out? Oh, come on. He wouldn’t be much use to Wesley if he couldn’t learn how to deal with Angel. He didn’t have to make friends with the man - probably couldn’t be done, anyway - just needed to be able to reassure him, and he could start by trying what Wesley did, being calm and patient and straightforward.</p>
<p>He pulled on his trousers and T-shirt and opened the door again. Angel was still by the bookcase; he turned his head when Gunn closed the door, but turned back after just a glance, his attention on the books like he’d already forgotten that Gunn was there.</p>
<p>“Angel. Hello.” Trying to sound friendly. Or better than polite, anyway.</p>
<p>A grunt. Absent-minded rather than hostile. Probably.</p>
<p>While he was in the bathroom Gunn wondered if Angel would still be in the living-room when he came back, or whether he would have retreated to his room. Turned out that Angel was still there, which had to be a good sign, didn’t it? Angel had taken some books out and put them on the floor between himself and his room, but he was still looking for something. What did someone like that read? Had it changed, as he’d got worse? And could you tell, from what he was reading, whether the next day was going to be good or bad?</p>
<p>Gunn walked slowly across the room to within three feet of Angel, with Angel’s door to his right. Angel’s room looked to be at least twice the size of Wesley’s. Even standing right in front of the door, Gunn couldn’t see the bed, just an armchair and a lamp, and pictures on the walls.</p>
<p>“Angel?”</p>
<p>Angel turned his whole body in one slow, smooth motion as he looked around and up at Gunn. A cat. He’d moved like a cat. And the stare, yes, that was as cold as a cat’s. Gunn fought to suppress a shiver as Angel got to his feet with the same slow grace. Or was it the same slow menace? No. He mustn’t start thinking like that. He’d be no use to Wesley if he started thinking like that.</p>
<p>“I’ve been here a lot this week. I’ll probably be here even more from now on. All day, sometimes. Wesley says you keep to your room anyway but it has to make a difference to you how much I’m here. I don’t want it to be a problem. If there’s anything you need me to change, then you should tell me. You can tell me.”</p>
<p>The stare. Unblinking. Was that Angel’s answer, in itself? Don’t talk to me? You’re not Wesley, so you don’t talk to me? How long should he wait, though, before taking that as Angel’s only answer.</p>
<p>Suddenly, with no warning: “Wesley smells different.” Gunn gasped, took an involuntary step backwards. Angel didn’t seem to notice, continued without any pause. “He smells warmer. Lighter. He’s happy. He can be happy.”</p>
<p>“Oh, can he?” As instinctive as his step backwards, the need to challenge anyone who stated any claim on his Wesley, like he’d never had those ideas about being calm with Angel, being reassuring. “He’s got your -” The door had closed behind Angel, leaving Gunn standing in the dark. Under his breath: “He’s got your permission, does he?”</p>
<p>Gunn went back to bed and lay staring up at the ceiling. His heartbeat had nearly returned to normal before it occurred to him that, again, Angel had not meant it like that at all. Instead, he’d meant… What? That Gunn being there wasn’t a problem for him, that he’d put up with anything if Wesley would be happy? Or he might not even have meant it as an answer to what Gunn had said, any more than he’d seemed to the other times they’d spoken. Maybe that was simply all he had to say to Gunn: that he’d noticed the effect Gunn had on Wesley.</p>
<p>But what a way to say it! To claim you knew a man’s scent, knew it well enough to notice changes. And to make that claim to the man’s lover. That was truly a crazy thing to do. No more crazy, though, than not knowing if you’d been to fight a Lurgan demon in a garden in Fairfax. Gunn couldn’t say he hadn’t been warned. He should’ve been prepared for that and worse. He shouldn’t’ve reacted. Shouldn’t’ve taken it personally. Wesley would’ve been… No, probably not angry with him, but he would have to have been disappointed.</p>
<p>Gunn turned over onto his side, then slid his hand slowly across the sheet, where the first thing it met was Wesley’s hand stretched out towards him, palm upwards. Gunn laid his hand gently across Wesley’s palm and wrist and Wesley made a small sound of agreement or recognition, and Gunn felt immediately warmed and calmed, while knowing that Wesley was deeply asleep, and the sound meant nothing at all.</p>
<p>Gunn dreamed about Angel, although afterwards he couldn’t remember anything except an unsettling presence, and a sense of something left incomplete. Soon after they woke in the morning, he said, “Wesley? Has Angel given you any more idea yet how he feels about the two of us? Has he… behaved differently towards you since we got together?”</p>
<p>“Well, he asks about you. That’s different. I’ve never really known him to show interest in someone before.”</p>
<p>“What does he ask?”</p>
<p>“Nothing very specific. He says, ‘Tell me about Charles,’ and I start telling him my favourite things about you. The censored version. Until he begs me to stop.”</p>
<p>“No, seriously.”</p>
<p>“That is more or less what happens. He doesn’t beg me to stop, he’s just not listening any more. And I try to keep to the type of facts he’s able to keep clear, and try to build on what I’ve already told him and find out what he does remember.”</p>
<p>“Why do you think he’s asking?”</p>
<p>“Because he knows you’re important.”</p>
<p>“You don’t think he might get jealous? I dunno. Threatened. Just weird.”</p>
<p>“In what way?” Puzzled.</p>
<p>“You said he’d never think of you like that. But it’s got to make him look at you differently. Has he been askin’ about you and other men, me and other men? Anything like he’s started takin’ notice?”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “He’s not like that.” A sudden smile. “And his tastes run to blondes, anyway. He wouldn’t look twice at either of us.”</p>
<p>Somehow that bothered Gunn more than anything he’d been imagining about Angel’s attitude to Wesley. Wesley could smile about it, but Gunn could see that it did matter to Wesley, that Wesley had spent far too much time thinking about Angel’s tastes. “Did you ever wish he would? Was he ever ‘dashing’ enough to be the type of man you had a crush on?”</p>
<p>Another shrug. “Well, you can’t help having some reaction, can you? He’s beautiful. So beautiful it’s frightening sometimes to look at him. But I can’t have a crush on someone who actively dislikes me, and…” A sigh. “I made a very bad first impression in Sunnydale. That didn’t really change until he first started teaching me to fight. After I got out of hospital. I remember when he started talking as if I was going to stay.” A sigh. “But then there was so much happening, I was too tired even to notice that he was still beautiful. And then there were other things to think about and we’d both seen too much. It would have been a very stupid crush, anyway, even by my standards.”</p>
<p>“But you still think he’s beautiful? ‘So beautiful it’s frightening’?”</p>
<p>“You really don’t? I thought everyone wanted him.”</p>
<p>“OK, yeah, he’s impressive. But I can’t have a crush on someone I can’t talk to. I’d never want to be close to him. I wanted to be close to you, wanted to talk over everything with you, before I even realised what I really wanted from you.”</p>
<p>Sometime later, Wesley said thoughtfully, “That probably was what I felt when I first knew that he didn’t actively want me to go away anymore. I mean, that I wanted to be close to him. Or just wanted to be important to him. For some things. That he would take me into account sometimes. And then a month or so later that just didn’t matter, and I hadn’t even noticed the change. I’ll never know what he thinks of me and it doesn’t matter. As long as I know how to work with him.”</p>
<p>Gunn thought that he knew more than Wesley in that case, because he knew that Angel thought about what made Wesley happy. So Wesley was important to Angel. And Angel must know exactly what Wesley had done for him, what would have happened to him without Wesley. He should tell Wesley what he knew about Angel. How he knew. Because whatever Wesley said it must still matter enough that it would make him happy to hear it.</p>
<p>But he wasn’t going to tell Wesley, couldn’t bring himself to - because he was jealous. Not stupidly jealous, and he knew he’d get over it, once he’d seen Angel a few more times, not in the middle of the night, once he’d seen again how Wesley was calm, and patient, and nothing more. But for now he didn’t want to give up any of his share of Wesley’s attention, not even to give Wesley good news.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Gunn wasn’t patrolling that night, since it was a Friday; Tuesdays and Fridays had been his nights off since the beginning of the year. Wesley was going to cook them a curry, and had been almost indignant when Gunn had offered to get something to go.</p>
<p>“You shouldn’t have to take care of the food every time. Just because this is the only place we can meet. I can get anything you want.”</p>
<p>“I want a proper Friday-night, end-of-the-week curry. This is for me. If you hate it, we’ll negotiate about ‘to-go’ for next Friday.” Wesley did agree, however, that it was Gunn’s turn to buy the beers.</p>
<p>Gunn left the base shortly before half past six, and recognised within a minute that he was being tailed by Vince, who had pulled out of a side-road a few blocks from the base. Gunn decided to stick to his plan for stopping to pick up beer; depending on where they both parked, it could give him a chance to shake Vince, or to confront him. As it turned out, he shook Vince, but this was surely only the beginning.</p>
<p>Wesley was wearing a blue shirt with two buttons undone, the same blue shirt that he’d worn on Tuesday, and Angel was standing in the same position just outside the kitchen, where he’d been watching Wesley working on the pizza; but this time Angel had a beer, and he smiled at Gunn and greeted him by name.</p>
<p>“Angel!” Gunn recovered quickly from his surprise, and found he was genuinely pleased to see the man. “Hi.” Maybe Angel didn’t remember anything of what had happened during the night, not even the fact that Gunn had got angry with him, and that he had a right to resent Gunn for that.</p>
<p>Gunn still couldn’t think of anything to say to Angel, but this time he wasn’t stressing about it. Angel wasn’t staring at him. They’d stand and drink their beers and watch Wesley chopping and crushing, and if they found a real reason to talk to one another, then they’d talk.</p>
<p>“Shouldn’t you be singing the National Anthem, Wes? When you’re cooking the British national dish? Show the proper respect?”</p>
<p>“That’s for Chicken Tikka Masala. For Lamb Pasanda I just bow once in the direction of St. Paul’s.”</p>
<p>Angel gave a brief laugh then turned to Gunn. “Do you think of it as all bangers and mash, fish and chips? British food.”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged, doubting whether he’d ever thought about it at all. “I guess.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded. “I did too until I got to know Wes properly. And I’ve never seen him go near any of that. But when it comes to curries… I swear I’ve heard him ordering them in his sleep. When did that happen, Wes? I mean, the last time I was in England - Well, that was a long time ago.”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “I don’t know. When we got out of India? Before I was born, probably. My mother’s parents were born in India. They had their favourite Indian restaurant in London. They used to take me there as a treat from school. I don’t know when the taste spread to the general population.”</p>
<p>Gunn said, “You can get a curry here in L.A., can’t you? I thought there were plenty of places.” And then he remembered that Wesley hadn’t eaten out in L.A., apart from their one Mexican meal.</p>
<p>“You can get a perfectly acceptable curry. There’s a place in Santa Monica I’ve been back to more than once. But I haven’t found anywhere where they really seem to care, where they’re doing anything new. Nowhere that I’d bother to tell people about.” He shook his head slightly. “Not that there are many like that back home, anyway. Most of the time when I order in my sleep, I’m in Tabaq in Balham, before it went upmarket.” He sighed, stared into the middle distance, and looked wistful.</p>
<p>Gunn and Angel looked at one another, raised their eyebrows, and smiled. Gunn couldn’t feel jealous of Angel any more, couldn’t connect this smiling man with that freaky conversation in the middle of the night. They’d be fine, the three of them. They’d make it work.</p>
<p>Wesley had stopped looking wistful and had opened the oven, releasing a wave of moist heat, and then taking out a baking tray. “Is that eggplant?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “Aubergine. I like the texture you get with this. The crispness from the skins. Next to the pulp.” A sudden smile. “Like you and your perfect Danish.”</p>
<p>With a similar smile: “I like the sound of that.” Then Gunn turned to Angel. “What’s your idea of the perfect Danish? Or don’t you have a sweet tooth either?”</p>
<p>But Angel was looking at some point on the wall opposite, didn’t seem to realise that Gunn was talking to him. Gunn looked questioningly at Wesley, wondering if he should ask again, but Wesley shook his head, and then asked Gunn what they did about meals back at the base. Gunn had just started to answer when Angel drained his beer, put the bottle on the counter with a thud, and stepped back.</p>
<p>“Another?” Wesley gestured towards the fridge.</p>
<p>Angel shook his head, frowning slightly, took another step back, then turned and went to his room.</p>
<p>“Good night, Angel.” Wesley’s usual calm tone.</p>
<p>A pause after the door had closed, then Gunn said, “I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>Surprised: “What about?” Wesley took Angel’s bottle and put it in the box for recycling.</p>
<p>“I think I lost him. Askin’ you about the eggplant. Cut him out.”</p>
<p>“No, he’d just reached his limit. There’s not much you can do, deliberately, to either lose him or keep him. I never know what’s going to catch his interest like that.”</p>
<p>“Has he been like that all day?”</p>
<p>“God, no. His limit’s about half an hour these days. He was very, very quiet today. I thought he’d disappear when you were due to arrive. Not start a real conversation.”</p>
<p>“I guess he likes the smell of curry.”</p>
<p>“Maybe. Or it might have been something to do with you. Seeing you again after he’d been asking about you. I suppose we’ll find out when he’s seen you a few more times. When I’ve cooked a few more curries.”</p>
<p>When they were sitting down, waiting for the rice to cook, Gunn asked Wesley what else he missed from England, apart from curries that were worth telling people about.</p>
<p>Slowly: “Well, I miss London. I miss city walking. Having walking as a real option. And as part of that I miss public gardens. Knowing you’re never more than five minutes away from somewhere you can sit and be quiet without having to buy a coffee. And I miss the feeling that every square inch around me has been used by humans. Over and over again. That it’s been noticed, recorded, and changed.”</p>
<p>“The history thing, right?”</p>
<p>Wesley frowned. “I supposed it sounds as if I’m saying I don’t like L.A. because it’s so new - and that’s not true, I do like L.A. and the newness is a large part of what I like about L.A., it’s refreshing. It’s more… being used to a country that’s so small you really can work over every inch. And a country that feels as if it was made for humans, as if it likes having people in it.” He shook his head. “I don’t get that feeling here. Sometimes the opposite. “ A shrug. “It’s what you’re used to. You’d probably find England claustrophobic. Worn out. But it unnerved me in the first few months. There was too much obvious ‘landscape’ around Sunnydale. Lying out there, muttering to itself. L.A.’s much better. It’s almost domesticated.”</p>
<p>After some seconds, Gunn said, “Is that what you always say when people ask how you like California?”</p>
<p>“I tell them I like the weather and the ocean. The feeling that everyone’s starting again. Making it up as they go along. It sounds that strange, does it, my reaction to the landscape?”</p>
<p>“The muttering, English. That’s gotta throw people. You really think it’s alive? Is this a demon thing? Something they teach you?”</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t be surprised if it was alive. But for now… let’s say it’s just a way of speaking.” A smile.” If it will stop you worrying about me and the muttering.”</p>
<p>“I wasn’t worrying, I just - No one talks like that. It’s either, ‘Hey, nice view,’ or, ‘Jeez, it’s worse than Barstow.’ When you look at things that differently… Do have to check sometimes what you mean and what you don’t mean. But you like the ocean? That doesn’t mutter?”</p>
<p>“I love the Coast Highway. There was about a month, when I’d got confident enough about driving again, when I didn’t have to think twice about leaving Angel for the afternoon because I knew he’d be able to call me if something happened. That was the closest I’ve ever come to getting a tan.”</p>
<p>“I can call you if something happens. You can leave him with me for as long as you like. Why don’t you go out tomorrow?”</p>
<p>Wesley’s immediate reaction was a flicker of dismay, followed by an almost-convincing combination of surprise, gratitude and regret. “It wouldn’t be the same now, without you. I wouldn’t see the ocean, or enjoy the sun. I’d just be working out how quickly I could get back to you.”</p>
<p>On some level Gunn did believe what Wesley was saying, but there was something else, something Wesley wasn’t saying. Did Wesley not trust him to look after Angel? What did Wesley think he’d do wrong? Or was it the effect the change would have on Angel? Gunn opened his mouth to ask Wesley directly, then decided to let it go; maybe Wesley just wasn’t in the mood to explain to Gunn how little he still understood about Angel. “Well, the offer’s always there.”</p>
<p>At Gunn’s first taste of each of the three curry dishes, Wesley asked, “What do you think?”, each time in the same tone, like he was talking to another expert, wanting to test his own ideas about what had gone wrong.</p>
<p>“I think you’ll be cooking this every Friday, until you beg me to give you a night off and get us something to go. C’mon, you know it’s ten times better than anything I could have had. I haven’t even been to that place in Santa Monica.”</p>
<p>“No, I’ll do something else next time.”</p>
<p>“One other thing. You gotta keep the eggplant and the cabbage or I’ll start thinking I imagined them.”</p>
<p>“Imaginary curries.” Wesley nodded. “That’s a good sign. Show me proof of three dreams and I’ll get you registered as an honorary Englishman.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed. “Yeah? What does that get me?”</p>
<p>“Oh.” A brief pause. “The ability to identify another Englishman’s class background in under a minute. A sensitivity to embarrassment so acute it could actually kill you. Nothing that would be useful to you, especially not here in L.A. What about being an honorary Angeleno? How far do I have to go?”</p>
<p>There Gunn was an expert, and he played it very, very tough, not budging even through all the evidence Wesley wanted him to hear. Wesley making steady progress? No way. Gunn did wonder, after one of their noisier exchanges, what it was like for Angel, sitting alone in his room, listening to a besotted couple teasing and flirting for hours on end. How many times a day did he have to tell himself that he was glad to hear it, glad of every sign that Wesley was happy?</p>
<p>When they’d finished doing the dishes, Gunn opened beers - their first from the pack he had brought - and they moved to the couch. Wesley asked about Gunn’s schedule for the weekend, whether they’d be able to spend either day together.</p>
<p>“Yeah, that’s a good question. There might not be any schedule. I thought I wouldn’t have to tell you until at least next week, didn’t want to worry you, but I haven’t told my crew yet where I’ve been spending my nights. When they’ve asked I’ve just told them it’s none of their business. But one of them tailed me here tonight - or he tried, I shook him after a couple of miles - so if he brings in some others and gets his act together tomorrow night, then I’m looking at a showdown in the next couple of days.” A brisk shake of the head. “Don’t worry, I’ll take them back to base. You won’t have them waitin’ on the doorstep or anythin’.”</p>
<p>“Charles?” Sharp alarm. “What sort of showdown?”</p>
<p>Matter-of-fact, on a sigh: “They won’t be happy when I tell them about you. None of them. Even the ones who’ve fought with you. Vince, he’ll be the one who’ll say it’s bad enough I’m a fag, how can they trust me after that, but that I won’t even choose my own kind, I must always’ve been lookin’ for some fancy white boy to take me off the streets. Doesn’t matter if he really thinks that, if anyone there really thinks that. They all know that’s what it looks like, and Vince’ll talk it up like it’s the betrayal of the century. They’ll never let it go.”</p>
<p>“Oh, God! I didn’t - I hadn’t - Charles!” Wesley swallowed, took several gasping breaths, and when he spoke again, there was a tremor in his voice. “What are you going to do?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged and smiled, and squeezed Wesley’s shoulder hard, intending uncomplicated reassurance. “I’ll step down straight away, not give Vince a chance to get started. Practically got my bags packed already. I’m not the right person to lead them any more. I don’t care enough, not now. It’s not a big deal. Wes, don’t look like that.” Wesley looked like he might pass out, or throw up. “It’s my choice. It wasn’t even difficult. Wes, don’t.”</p>
<p>Wesley had closed his eyes, turned away slightly, slumped, with the heel of his hand pressed to his clammy forehead. Gunn stroked his back. “Wes. English. Come on. It isn’t a big deal. I know I should’ve told you earlier, but I thought I’d be able to wait till next week. I’m doing what I want. Decided on it days ago.” Wesley’s reaction was just guilt, wasn’t it? The shock of imagining what the crew would say about them. Not some complicated English thing from Wesley’s past?</p>
<p>Wesley suddenly lurched to his feet, stood hunched over, swaying slightly. Gunn got off the couch, about to urge him to sit down, lie down, but Wesley gave a ragged sigh, let his hand fall to his side, then took a step forward, past the coffee table, his gaze fixed on the door of Angel’s room. Gunn followed him for three or four steps, then stopped as he saw that Wesley was recovering his steadiness, his height; and as he started to wonder exactly what Wesley was doing, and why.</p>
<p>Wesley was going to tell Angel something. Or maybe ask Angel something. Was this about Wesley and Angel, about something between them? Or was it about whatever Wesley had - or hadn’t - told Angel about Gunn, about himself and Gunn? But Wesley didn’t open the door and go in to Angel. Instead, Gunn heard the sound of the key turning in the lock, and then Wesley crossed the living-room, went into his own bedroom and closed the door. The key was gone from the lock of Angel’s door, so Wesley must be hiding it; Wesley was protecting Angel, locking him safely away from Gunn. Gunn moved forward, took up position a few feet from Angel’s door, and waited for Wesley to come out of his room.</p>
<p>Wesley walked towards Gunn, still very pale, but no longer dazed and shaken. Instead, his gaze was too clear: bleak, determined, resigned.</p>
<p>“So tell me.” Gunn’s tone was a match for Wesley’s expression. “What the two of you’ve been doing.”</p>
<p>“Nothing. Not that. It’s…” A sigh. “Angel is a vampire.” Wesley’s voice was quiet, as clear and bleak as his face.</p>
<p>Gunn didn’t feel surprise, not a glimmer, or feel annoyed with himself for missing all of the clues. You see a supremely gifted fighter who can move like a cat, you don’t immediately think vampire. Or when you’re told that he doesn’t really eat. Or are given hints that he’s older than he looks. Or when you hear him snarling like a hungry animal. You don’t think it, not when the vampire is in the care of the person you most admire.</p>
<p>He’d been jealous of a vampire. He’d got angry with a vampire, when he was alone with it in the middle of the night. He’d joked with a vampire about English food.</p>
<p>Gunn hardly knew what to think, or what to feel, or where to start with his questions.</p>
<p>“What you’ve told me about him. About you. Was any of that true?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “It’s all true. I’ve never lied to you, Charles. I wouldn’t lie to you. But I’ve been waking up every day thinking, ‘Today. I’ll work out today how to tell Charles everything.’ How to tell you properly.”</p>
<p>“That you’re messing with somethin’ that’s gonna get you killed? And not just you, most likely. He’s got you thinkin’ you’ve tamed him? ‘cos a couple of times he could’ve killed you and he didn’t. Man, you better change your card. ‘Expert on demons. But understands fuck all about vampires.’ You can’t ever be anything to him except a meal.”</p>
<p>“No, of course I haven’t tamed him. But I didn’t need to. He’s been different from other vampires for a long time. You’ve seen for yourself that he’s different. He’s never going to hurt anyone else. He helps people now. We help people.”</p>
<p>“What I’ve seen is he’s pretty-much crazy. That your ‘different’? The brain damage. You sayin’ that’s what it takes to ‘tame’ a vampire?”</p>
<p>“No, it’s not the brain damage. It’s not because of something missing, it’s because of something special he’s been given. It’s because he has a soul, when other vampires don’t. He was given back his soul about a hundred years ago, and he became a person again as well as a demon. So he has a conscience and remorse, and he’s able to have feelings for people other than just hunger. With the soul… he doesn’t feed from people. He tries to atone. He’s completely different.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, right. You ever think to ask him what he was like without it? Or you just take his word for everything? ‘Oh, no, Wes, I’m different, I’ve got a soul. You don’t have to worry about me for a second.’ ”</p>
<p>“I didn’t ask him, and he would never tell me not to worry about him. He knows I’ve read about him, all of the important accounts of what he did when he had no soul. He was know as Angelus then. He was one of the worst. And no one is more horrified than Angel by the knowledge of what Angelus did. I’ve seen him desperate to atone.”</p>
<p>“And that’s what you live with?” Gunn raised his hand, pointed over his shoulder at Angel’s door, but without taking his eyes from Wesley’s. “That’s what you had a crush on. That’s what you think is beautiful. You know exactly what he’s done and here you are protecting him? That’s sick, man. You gotta know it’s sick.”</p>
<p>“What I know is that he’s Angel now. He is not Angelus. I might not have believed either, just from what I’d read, but when I saw how he behaves, what he does as Angel, then I believed. Charles, the first time you ever saw him he was fighting vampires. Helping people. That’s his whole purpose now. And helping him… It’s the most important thing I’ve ever done.”</p>
<p>Meaning: I’ll never choose you over him, even though you’d choose me over your crew. But Gunn had known that already, when he’d thought Angel was nothing worse than crazy.</p>
<p>“And the accident? Whatever’s happening to his mind. Or is that how the soul thing works?”</p>
<p>“No, he got his soul back a hundred years ago. I think he’s always been withdrawn. Avoided people. But he could more than take care of himself. Getting the visions last November… I think it was an accident. And the effect they’re having on him, that’s probably an accident too.”</p>
<p>Impatient: “What visions?”</p>
<p>“The tip-offs. They’re not ordinary tip-offs, not from contacts here in L.A. They’re visions that he gets of people in danger from demons, people we have to help. They’re sent by…” A shrug. “ ‘The Powers That Be.’ That’s how Angel always puts it. He thinks they’ve had plans for him, maybe for some time. I don’t know. I just know that we do help. All those customers at the thrift shop. The family in Fairfax. Angel saw what would happen, as if he was there.”</p>
<p>“You’re saying he’s some kind of mystic now? He’s got his soul and he’s atoned and he’s become a vampire saint. Floating above everything in a world of his own?”</p>
<p>“That would be the Hollywood version. What I’ve seen…” Wesley shook his head. “I can’t find out exactly what’s happening to him, but when a vision hits him… They slam into him, like a wrecking ball. Like a bolt of lightning. They take over his nervous system, won’t let go until everything’s over. I think each one burns something out, leaves him more fractured. I don’t know where it will end. Probably with him lost to everything except the visions.”</p>
<p>“Or killing him?” Trying to sound as sombre as Wesley, when he’d always think that a vampire dying was the best end to a good day.</p>
<p>“I don’t know. I don’t know if brain damage can kill a vampire. I don’t know why the demon in him can’t repair that type of damage when it can heal almost anything else. I’ve read everything I can find, but I can’t see any patterns in how the visions affect people. Except for the humans, because they do die, sometimes within months. He might stabilise, the demon might be doing more than I realise. It’s only been six or seven months. I think for some people it did get easier.”</p>
<p>A long, long pause. “And if he doesn’t? Stabilise?” Or die. “If he gets worse than he was that night he hit you. How you gonna cope when you daren’t even go near him? When he never knows who you are?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know yet, but I know that I will cope. What else would I do? When there are people we have to help.”</p>
<p>Quietly: “Alone.” Gunn knew what it was to face danger, to be willing to die for something important. But he always faced the danger with his crew; they gave each other courage, and recognition, and comfort, they made the fight a pleasure as well as a duty. Wesley was alone. Every scrap of courage, he had to summon for himself. He didn’t expect recognition or look for comfort; you could tell that from his helpless astonishment at any sign that someone had noticed, that someone cared. And yes he would cope alone, with Angel and with fight after fight, until one or the other killed him.</p>
<p>“Yes.” With a small nod, and an expression of such flat resignation - a complete acceptance of the absence of hope. Gunn stepped forward and put his arms around Wesley, wanting to show Wesley that there was hope, that everything would be different now they were together.</p>
<p>Wesley gave a brief, wavering exhalation, touched his hand lightly to Gunn’s back for a moment, then let it drop. “Charles. Please. Please don’t bring your crew after him. I swear, if I think he could harm anyone again, I’ll kill him myself. Please. You can forget you ever met us.”</p>
<p>Gunn stepped back, found Wesley suddenly avoiding his eyes. Was Wesley ashamed of asking, of pleading for his vampire? Or did he think he knew too well how Gunn would answer. “You think I’m gonna leave you?”</p>
<p>Now Wesley looked at him, with that terrible hopeless certainty. “You said alone. I know you can’t stay. Of course you can’t. Not now. I’m sorry. I should have - I should never have -”</p>
<p>Gunn drew him close again. “You should’ve had another couple of weeks. To work out how to tell me in your own time. I’ll go into the base first thing tomorrow and tell them straight off. No point in waiting now. I don’t want you to be alone for a second longer than you have to. C’n I stay here for a few days? Haven’t had a chance yet to start lookin’ for somewhere to live.”</p>
<p>“Charles!” Wesley slumped against him, clutched at him, breathing harshly, like he was close to tears. Gunn held Wesley steady, soothed him with near-wordless murmurs. Eventually Wesley said, almost in a whisper, “Why? He is a vampire. Why would you…”</p>
<p>“The same reason you told me about him the moment you found out what was happening with my crew. Even though you thought I’d leave you. Because we love each other. If something’s important to you, if you believe in it, then I do too. I know I’ll get to see for myself that Angel really is different. But for now it’s enough that he’s your vampire.”</p>
<p>A pained groan. “You can’t give up your friends because of me. You mustn’t. I - I - How can I be worth it?”</p>
<p>“I’m not giving anything up. I wouldn’t be with the crew forever, anyway. And this way I get to do somethin’ just as important, and I get to do it with you. You can’t honestly think I’d want things any other way. As for givin’ things up, what about you, with Angel and the visions? When d’you ever ask yourself if he’s worth it?”</p>
<p>“It’s not…” Wesley raised his head, seeming genuinely puzzled, like he was taking what Gunn had said as real questions, not just a way of arguing. “I know I didn’t give up anything. What else would I do?”</p>
<p>Well, he could have a life of his own. But maybe Wesley wouldn’t know what to do with one of those. Gunn did find it hard to imagine Wesley without Angel, doing things just because he wanted to. “Wesley? When was the last time you asked for something for yourself? What would you ask for?”</p>
<p>“Well, I’d ask you to stay for more than a few days.” A small, uncertain smile. “But of course you’d want somewhere of your own. Angel’s easier to live with than you’d think, but I don’t know if you could say that about me.”</p>
<p>However long it had been since Wesley had last asked for something, it sounded like he’d been turned down. And probably the five times before that, too. Gunn shook his head, smiling. “Can see we’re gonna have to work out a system. Make sure we won’t both try to be tactful at the same time. I don’t want a place on my own, not when I want to spend every night with you. I just said because you’d know better than me if Angel could cope with having me living here.” A shrug. “It is gonna seem crowded sometimes.”</p>
<p>“I know. But I think Angel wants to cope with the two of us. He keeps asking why you’re not here, when you’re coming back. And he can’t understand why I let you leave.” Softly, almost a whisper: “So you will stay?”</p>
<p>“Of course I’ll stay.”</p>
<p>They kissed for a long time, sighing and murmuring and shifting against one another, but becoming aroused only slowly. Too much adrenaline, Gunn decided. Far too much to think about, for both of them.</p>
<p>He’d be living with a vampire. Helping to protect a vampire. What would the crew make of that? Well, what would anyone? Gunn wondered if there was anyone outside this apartment who knew the truth about Angel Investigations.</p>
<p>“Should we let him out? Tell him what’s happened?”</p>
<p>Wesley frowned for a few seconds, then shook his head. “No, I don’t want to deal with him right now. I’d much rather deal with you, in our bed.”</p>
<p>Gunn’s cock reacted so fast, it seemed to happen even before he’d really noticed what Wesley had said. “So it’s ‘our’ bed, now?”</p>
<p>Wesley looked briefly surprised, then slid his hand down to Gunn’s ass and pulled him close, his breathing starting to catch up to Gunn’s. “And you’re a romantic. I wouldn’t have guessed.”</p>
<p>Gunn growled, partly playing it tough, mostly excited; and he pushed himself against Wesley. “This feel like ‘romance’ to you?”</p>
<p>Slowly, deliberately: “Tell me. What you want to do with me, in our bed. What do you want to do differently, now that it’s ours?”</p>
<p>Gunn imagined everything they’d already done, slower, faster, harder, again and again, forever. Every inch of their bodies used for sex - no reserve, no distinction. And nothing between them except sex, nowhere they met except the bed. “Everything.” Gunn’s voice was unsteady; his throat felt half-closed by the pulse thudding through it.</p>
<p>“Everything?” Wesley raised his eyebrows, seemed to change his mind at least twice about what he was going to say. “Starting with what?”</p>
<p>“Don’t know yet. But starting now.” Gunn tugged at Wesley’s belt, backing him towards the bedroom.</p>
<p>“And now?” Wesley was kneeling on the far side of the bed, waiting for Gunn. “Do you know now? What you want to do?”</p>
<p>Gunn knelt opposite Wesley, just close enough to touch. “Get inside you. But it’s still too - Have to take that slow and serious. But I want…”</p>
<p>“Do you want…” Wesley reached down for Gunn’s hand and lifted it level with his open mouth. “Do you want to make a start?”</p>
<p>Gunn wasn’t sure what Wesley meant - but he wanted everything of Wesley, no questions. As soon as he nodded, Wesley leaned forward and took Gunn’s middle finger into his mouth. Gunn groaned at the sight, closed his eyes at the heat and wetness, then opened his eyes again as soon as Wesley pulled away and slowly lowered his hand.</p>
<p>“Have you ever done this before? Put your fingers inside someone? Do you know what to expect?”</p>
<p>“Just to myself.”</p>
<p>“Then you know.” Wesley let go of Gunn’s hand and then put his arm around Gunn’s chest and pulled himself close - bracing himself, almost, though he wasn’t tense.</p>
<p>Gunn reached behind Wesley with both hands, and felt first with his left hand so he wouldn’t waste any of the wetness from his right. The first time he’d ever done this with someone else, and he was going to do everything he could think of to make it good. After he’d switched hands, he didn’t try to press in immediately, but slowly circled and rocked, wetting the muscle, and feeling like he was warming it, softening it, learning what it wanted. Wesley sighed, and opened his mouth against Gunn’s neck.</p>
<p>Even warmed and softened, the muscle was very tight, and if he’d been trusting only to the feelings from his hand, Gunn would probably have stopped before the first knuckle; but everything else was telling him that this was right for Wesley, more than right. So he kept on, as deep as he could get, with Wesley moaning and sweating and gasping his name. For a while, Gunn tried to give them both a chance to calm down, so they would make it last, so he could take in more than a fraction of the reality of being allowed inside Wesley; but Wesley’s reactions made that impossible.</p>
<p>“Well, I wouldn’t argue with anyone who called that everything.” Wesley sounded far beyond relaxed, like he might never move again. They’d fallen sideways across the bed, still tightly locked in the same grasp; Wesley was on his left side, but seemed comfortable enough against the support of Gunn’s arm.</p>
<p>“Was damn close.” A contented sigh. “Couldn’t be what you expected, though, when you called me romantic.”</p>
<p>“I call romantic whatever reminds us that we can make each other almost forget to breathe.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed. “Yeah, OK. You know, just a second or so before you called me that, I’d been thinking we probably wouldn’t have sex tonight. We’d be too strung out after what we’d been through. What you’d told me.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “I mainly wanted to get away from Angel. Away from where we’d been when I knew you’d have to leave me. I thought we’d lie and talk. It’s early. By our standards, it’s very early.”</p>
<p>Gunn smiled. “Hardly touched our second beers. They’d still be nearly cold.”</p>
<p>“You want to get them, don’t you?” Wesley sounded amused.</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged, then nodded. “Friday night. Some things I expect like you expect your curry.”</p>
<p>“I can understand that.” Wesley arched up, away from Gunn’s arm, and they slowly disentangled themselves, then both went into the bathroom. It was the first time they had been in the bathroom together, the first time they had seen themselves together in a mirror, and they stood and stared, and placed hands to see the contrast.</p>
<p>“You are one fancy white boy, English. Couldn’t argue with Vince about that, he wanted to take that line. People are gonna think we got some kinda black/white, street/silver-spoon thing goin’. Gonna take one look ‘n’ think they know all about us.”</p>
<p>Wesley frowned briefly, shook his head. “They’ll know I got lucky. And they’ll wonder how you manage not to see…” A flicker of the eyes in the mirror towards his left shoulder, and then he was staring into Gunn’s eyes. “How do you manage?”</p>
<p>Easily and truthfully: “I don’t think about it.”</p>
<p>“Not even now?”</p>
<p>“I think about not hurting you. And I think about how I love everything about you, every part of you. If you don’t want me to think about anything else, then I won’t.”</p>
<p>A pause, then Wesley started to turn towards him. “Do you want to see?”</p>
<p>Slowly: “If you’re ready.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “Be careful if you touch it. I know you’ll be careful but please don’t stroke it. Almost anything moving against it feels wrong.”</p>
<p>“I’ll be careful.” Gunn put his right hand on Wesley’s side, turned him the final inch, settled his left hand on Wesley’s chest, then took his first direct look at the damage. There were clear lines of scars, still looking jagged and raw to Gunn, a long way to go before they’d be faded down to white. Even though the lines were clear, it was difficult to count them - they crossed too many times, changed paths too abruptly. Looked like a battleground –a hard fight, a long fight, to make the best possible use of the skin that was left around the empty socket. Probably it was well done. Probably it was all that could be done. He refused to think about anything else but the doctors bent over the night’s new problem, their concentration, their determination. He couldn’t bear to imagine anything else about that night.</p>
<p>After about a minute he raised his head. “They took good care of you, it looks like.”</p>
<p>“I think so. I don’t remember much. Angel probably scared them.”</p>
<p>“Do you still need me not to see, the rest of the time?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “Not anymore. Thank you.” A sigh of surprise and relief. “I’ve had nightmares about that. Not about you seeing it, the nightmares were months ago. About anyone seeing it. But that turned out to be easy.”</p>
<p>Gunn got the beers while Wesley turned out the lights in the kitchen and living-room. Angel was still awake, or at least, the light was on in his room, showing as a line under the bottom of the door.</p>
<p>“You really gonna leave him like that all night?” They were at the door of the bedroom, with Wesley just about to lead the way in.</p>
<p>“It’s the safest thing to do. By tomorrow he should have forgotten most of what he overheard. There’s less chance then that he’ll be difficult to deal with.”</p>
<p>“You think he overheard much?”</p>
<p>“Yes, everything.”</p>
<p>Wesley’s reply had been so casual that it wasn’t until they were settling themselves against the pillows that Gunn started really remembering what they had said, and thinking about what Angel must have overheard. “Wesley, you said you’d kill him! How the hell’s he gonna forget that?”</p>
<p>“You don’t need to worry about that. He already knows what I’d do. We’ve talked about it several times.”</p>
<p>Gunn could only stare at Wesley, thinking maybe for the fiftieth time, “What is your life like?” Finally: “Is he scared of what’s happening to him? How much does he understand?”</p>
<p>“Less and less, I think. To both questions. When we first realised that it was getting worse…” A deep sigh. “We were both scared. But then we found out that we could cope.”</p>
<p>After several minutes silence, Gunn said, “Did Angel have a vision of you? When he saved you from that demon.”</p>
<p>“The Kungai. Yes. It was his first vision. He didn’t know until then that he’d been given them. And it was the middle of the day. So he had to deal with all of that, head out on his own. As soon as I could afterwards, I started going out with him. It was the only thing to do. He taught me how to fight. We even managed to keep his detective business going.”</p>
<p>Wesley’s voice was neutral, but Gunn saw the implication: that Angel could have been in time to save Wesley’s arm. He wondered if Wesley and Angel had ever talked about that.</p>
<p>“Were you rooming together the whole time?”</p>
<p>“He had an office at first. With a good-sized apartment underneath it. He took me home from the hospital. Gave me his bed.”</p>
<p>“How did that happen, if he didn’t like you when you met in Sunnydale? Was that because of the high-school stuff? Cordy and everything.”</p>
<p>“No, I was -” A pause. “I wasn’t at my best in Sunnydale. You wouldn’t have thought much of me either.” Another pause. “I’m sure he would have preferred never to see me again. But I think he felt guilty. You know. About the vision. That he wasn’t five minutes earlier. And he probably thought I’d head straight back to England, that he’d be rid of me in a week or so. But we couldn’t afford that building for very long. Really couldn’t afford to have an office. So we moved in here a couple of months ago.”</p>
<p>“When did you decide that you were staying? In L.A. with him.” Gunn felt cold, thinking of all the ways he and Wesley could have missed meeting each other.</p>
<p>“I don’t remember deciding. I’d been trying not to think about my future. Even before -” A sigh. “Angel started… having problems with other people. As if anything that wasn’t in the visions was a waste of his time. Almost as if it wasn’t real to him any more. So I started dealing with clients for him. Soon he couldn’t drive. Couldn’t collect his blood from the slaughterhouse. But he could still teach me to fight.”</p>
<p>“Lucky for him he decided to bring you home from the hospital.”</p>
<p>“Well, except that he thinks the Powers arranged it. That it wasn’t luck. That he didn’t really decide. He talked like that a lot when we first moved in here. I don’t think he -” Wesley was tense, protesting, and talking to himself rather than to Gunn. “I mean, when you remember that he was there. He saw everything. He saw me -” Wesley swallowed and sighed. “He seems to like the idea of a plan, that there’s someone in charge, that everything is for the best. I can see that he’s got a lot invested in that, and maybe I did once, but…” Shaking his head. “Why shouldn’t it all be an accident? Angel coming back from hell. Getting the visions. The Kungai. Everything. Given the choice now, I’d always prefer benign incompetence over callous efficiency. I expect that’s selfish. Yes, he was lucky. Let’s leave it at that.”</p>
<p>Angel coming back from hell? No, that had to be just another of Wesley’s ways of putting things. Like the muttering landscape. After about ten seconds, Gunn said, “He can’t imagine you not being here, Wes. That’s why he doesn’t think about what he’s saying.” That and the brain damage, but Wesley didn’t need Gunn to say something that could be taken as a joke.</p>
<p>“Used to say. And I can’t imagine either. It’s the most important thing I’ve ever done. So they wouldn’t have needed any plan to get me to stay. I would have said yes if they’d asked.”</p>
<p>Gunn stroked the length of Wesley’s thigh. “If they’d known to ask. It was all an accident. There’s nothing to think over.”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed and leaned against him. “Oh, it’s good to hear someone else say that. Even knowing you were never going to disagree with me, it’s still good.”</p>
<p>“You’ve been alone too long, English. It’s not good for you.”</p>
<p>“Ah.” A long, contented sigh. “Now we’re talking again about how I got lucky. You should never have noticed me. I’m not your type.”</p>
<p>“You’re not a ‘type’. C’mon, call me Sugarlips in ten different languages.” And Wesley did, with a kiss or six between each language. When they were back leaning against the pillows again, Gunn said, “D’you mind me calling you Wes? Or is Angel the only person who does that?”</p>
<p>“Well, until today. But I like it. And it’ll probably mean that when you call me Wesley, you’re annoyed with me. Which is always useful to know.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed. “Is that what Angel does?”</p>
<p>“He definitely used to. Now I think it’s more a matter of what he remembers about me on a particular day. If he doesn’t really remember we’ve lived together, then it’s Wesley. Or nothing.”</p>
<p>“What you gonna call me? When you’re annoyed with me.”</p>
<p>“That could simply never happen.” Not serious, too smugly confident. When they’d finished laughing, Wesley said, “I’ll think of something.”</p>
<p>Gunn suddenly turned serious, surprising even himself. “Then what about what we are to each other? What do we call that? Are you my lover, my boyfriend, my partner? What? If anyone asks?”</p>
<p>“Are you thinking about tomorrow?”</p>
<p>“I suppose. I’ve never had to decide before. I mean, ‘boyfriend’. It’d be OK for a girl to call you that, I wouldn’t think twice. But for me… You’re not a boy. And ‘lover’.” A sigh. “Sounds too neat. All packaged like it’s something safe. It’s not packaged, it’s… everywhere.”</p>
<p>“Um… I like both, actually. To be able to say that about you. ‘My boyfriend Charles’. I could say it a hundred times a day and still be amazed.”</p>
<p>“It sounds OK when you say it. ‘I’m Wesley’s boyfriend.’ ‘I’m Wesley’s lover.’ God, yes, I like that too. But… ‘He’s my boyfriend.’ “ Gunn shook his head slowly, pushing the word away, then more briskly, realising. “You know, I think it’s the idea of saying it in just one word. What you are. I don’t want people to think they know. Because they don’t.”</p>
<p>“But ‘my boyfriend Charles’ is OK?”</p>
<p>“I don’t care what they think they know about me. And being anything to you. Having a place in your life. No complaints about whatever describes any part of that. ”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>The next morning, Wesley unlocked the door to Angel’s room as soon as they were both dressed, before he’d even put the coffee on. Gunn stood guard immediately outside, in case Angel remembered too much and was difficult - but Angel was asleep.</p>
<p>“Can I see?”</p>
<p>Wesley made to open the door again, then paused for several seconds, and then moved away from the door, shaking his head slightly. “I’d rather ask him first. He can be very private about some things. It was months before he let me see him drinking.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded, not surprised. Of course Wesley would respect for his vampire’s privacy. “D’you think he’ll be like that with me? That it’ll take months?”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “He’s different now. His perception of other people is different. Most of the time he’ll probably think that you’ve always been here.”</p>
<p>Gunn got back to the base shortly before eleven, and immediately started rounding up Jackson, Rondell and George, his three deputies. He came across most of the crew in the process, and Vince and Elton were looking at him with active suspicion, though from what Gunn could judge they were either keeping it to themselves so far or not finding any takers.</p>
<p>“OK.” They were in Gunn’s bedroom. Gunn had started packing. “I’m gonna step down. I can’t head the crew any more. I’ll be tellin’ the whole crew as soon as we’re finished here.”</p>
<p>“You’re not just steppin’ down, you’re bailin’! What’s goin’ on with you, man?”</p>
<p>“I’ve met someone. Someone I have to be with. Can’t do both.”</p>
<p>“Just like that? Not even gonna try? Not even gonna bring her down here? How’d you ever meet someone who can’t see what it is you do?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, how the hell can that work?”</p>
<p>“It’s already working.” To Jackson: “And I met him the same place you did. In the thrift shop on Denker. Fighting a truckload of vampires.”</p>
<p>Jackson: “But that was - You’re shittin’ us?” Gunn shook his head.</p>
<p>Rondell: “Tell me it’s the big guy. I mean, we could -” He looked at Jackson, gave a small shrug. “I could see you might give that a try. You know, for a week or something. But, fuck, man, no one has to know.”</p>
<p>“It’s not the big guy. It’s the other one, the English guy. And everyone has to know. Because I’m movin’ in with him today. I’m leavin’.”</p>
<p>“So every night this week, you been…”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Jesus!”</p>
<p>“But he’s - Shit, man, how can you? What’d he do to you?”</p>
<p>“Make me happy. Make it worth giving up this.” A flick of the hand towards the door, meaning the whole base, all of them. “Putting up with this!” He jerked his chin forward, meaning their expressions, their reactions. “So I step down in half an hour, what you gonna do? Show me you’ve got a plan.”</p>
<p>Between them they did put together a plan, while Gunn finished packing. They chose Rondell to replace Gunn, and decided to bring in Vince as the third deputy. Better to have him on the inside. And he had initiative, thought on his feet, no shortage of courage. Perfectly good choice.</p>
<p>Jackson fetched Vince from the weapons room, and his reaction to the news was everything Gunn had expected. “A fag? That kind of fag? Damn, you fooled us good.” To the others: “Must’ve been pleased with himself, huh?”</p>
<p>Rondell, sharply: “Leave it. He’s gone. And we’ve all gotta act like we’re cool with it. Like there was nothin’ to know, there’s nothin’ to talk about. ‘cept he’s met someone and yeah it’s a surprise, but that’s life and who can blame him. We got somethin’ good here and most of that’s thanks to him, so we keep doin’ what we all know how to do.”</p>
<p>Gunn took his bags down to the truck while Jackson, Rondell and George called the crew to a meeting in the kitchen. Gunn made his announcement, then handed over to Rondell. Rondell immediately introduced Vince as a new deputy, and the four of them then presented a united front of brisk indifference, like no one could be expected to notice Gunn’s departure, like no one cared enough about his announcement to consider it a surprise. Gunn matched their indifference, and the questions and comments were few, and easily neutralised.</p>
<p>Rondell walked Gunn to the truck. With his hand on the door-handle, Gunn said, “Good work. You’ll do fine.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, we will.” Dismissive, unsmiling.</p>
<p>“You can call me, you know. Got somethin’ you wanna check out.”</p>
<p>“Sure.”</p>
<p>“You gonna badmouth me all over town?”</p>
<p>“You know we’re not. No point. Not gonna pretend we’re, like, ‘happy’ for you, though. Y’pitch that one on y’r own.”</p>
<p>“Figured.” Gunn opened the door, swung himself into the cab. “Good luck. I’ll ask after you. And keep out of your way.”</p>
<p>“Yeah.”</p>
<p>Gunn saw Rondell standing, watching the truck, until he turned the corner and was out of sight.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Part Two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time Gunn saw Angel drinking blood was on Saturday night, after they all got back from their first training session together. The blood was in a flask at the back of one of the salad crispers, and Gunn watched as Angel poured about half a pint into a plastic beaker and then put the beaker in the microwave.</p><p>“What sort of blood is it? I mean, what from?” Gunn was looking at Angel as Angel drank, expecting to see some sign of vampire hunger or satisfaction, but there was nothing to see.</p><p>“Pig.” Wesley was still busy piling a plate with bread and cheese and potato salad and pickles. “Angel says it’s the most nutritious. That is, judging by how much he needs.”</p><p>“What do you tell them at the slaughterhouse? They’ve got to wonder.”</p><p>“I tell them I’m making black pudding. That’s a sausage made with blood.” A small smile “Crucial in giving traditional English food its fearsome reputation. I’ve probably given the men at the slaughterhouse the impression that it’s almost all we eat. I don’t know what kind of blood it’s really made with.”</p><p>“It’s made with pig’s blood.” Angel was looking at his beaker, now nearly empty. His tone seemed absent-minded, like he’d been only half-listening and was only half-replying.</p><p>“Is it? That’s fortunate.”</p><p>“There were some villages that used geese, too, but that was rare. I only heard about that. I never tasted it.”</p><p>“Was this in Ireland?”</p><p>Angel nodded without looking directly at Wesley, then finished drinking and turned immediately to the sink to rinse the beaker.</p><p>“I thought it was a good training session tonight.” Wesley’s remark seemed to be directed mostly at Angel, but with a flick of the eye to include Gunn.</p><p>Sharp: “You’re becoming predictable again. I could see what you were thinking.” Angel had already made this point during the training session itself, and more than once.</p><p>“I know. I’ll do better tomorrow.”</p><p>To Gunn, less sharp: “You weren’t… You can fight much harder than that.” Angel had said little to Gunn during the session, beyond a few direct orders.</p><p>“Charles was holding back, I think. Since it was his first session with us.”</p><p>“Yeah. You won’t have it so easy tomorrow.”</p><p>“We have to train tomorrow.”</p><p>“We will, Angel. We should train every night.”</p><p>After Angel had gone to his room, Gunn said, “I thought it was a good session, too. When he fights, you’d never guess there was anything wrong with him. And you know how to get him back when he starts to lose his focus.”</p><p>“I think his body carries him through. It has its own attention span. You learn, after a while, what’s likely to get its attention.”</p><p>“We really should train every night. Has to be good for him, actin’ almost normal for a couple of hours every day. Gettin’ out of the apartment, too.”</p><p>Gunn had spent about an hour that day, on and off, wondering what Angel did with his time during the hours he spent shut in his room. Read and sleep? And, recently, listen. Gunn had spent even more of that day wondering what he himself was going to do with his time. Wesley and Angel were the type to have the patience to sit down and just read, do nothing but read and maybe, away from all of the distractions and interruptions of the crew, Gunn would learn that he did have it in him to get so caught up in a book that he wouldn’t want to do anything with his evening except read the book. Couldn’t really imagine that, though. Keeping busy, working off energy - that was natural to him, not some story that only happened inside your head. He had to get out and earn his share of the bills, too. He had some ideas for making more of Angel Investigations, and he’d discuss them with Wesley on Sunday, to be ready to make a start on Monday.</p><p>Gunn managed to take Wesley out for a few hours on Sunday afternoon, driving up the coast. Wesley really hadn’t been happy about the idea of leaving Angel for so long. Yes, he’d leave him when he had to, for work, but just for a drive? Irresponsible. Gunn had been starting to think that Wesley really wasn’t going to budge when Angel had suggested they just call in every fifteen, twenty minutes.</p><p>They went as far as Zuma, took a walk on the beach, sat on a rock and shared a soda. Wesley said, “What would you normally be doing on a Sunday afternoon?”</p><p>“Having a game of pickup, probably. We’d go to Venice most times. There’s an empty schoolyard a couple blocks from the base, but Venice seemed more worth the ride.”</p><p>“So you’d still be at the beach. Whereas this is different in every way from my normal Sunday.”</p><p>“Yeah, I can guess. Hope we can do something like this every week.”</p><p>Wesley nodded. “Angel usually has at least one good day in a week, even if it isn’t always a Sunday.”</p><p>“Difficult takin’ time from work, though. ‘Angel’s havin’ a good day, so we’re goin’ to the beach.’ ”</p><p>Wesley looked at him, eyebrows raised. “There are evenings. What sort of work do you mean? I can’t really imagine you working nine to five.”</p><p>“Nine to five’s for guys who can show they graduated. I’d be looking at shift work. But that’s only if you don’t think you can use me in your business. In Angel Investigations.”</p><p>Wesley looked surprised, then guilty. “We don’t get enough work to keep me busy. I can’t think what you would do.”</p><p>“I’d go out and look for more work, for a start. Follow up your old cases, see if there’s more people with the same problems. Track the news, the word on the street, for people whose problems might be with demons, they just don’t know it yet. And maybe there’s people who just want to hear stories about demons, and’ll pay by the word.”</p><p>Wesley looked very reluctant. “That’s a lot of talking to people. What could you say, to most of them?”</p><p>“You think I need to know more about demons, first? I guess it’s whether you could teach me quick enough.”</p><p>“I don’t know how much you’d need to know. You could talk to people like that all week and maybe only one would hire us. Most would treat you as if you were insane, or running a confidence trick. I know.”</p><p>“I’ve been treated worse. You just ignore it, kind of. It’s worth it for that one person who does hire us. Bein’ able to pay the rent doin’ what you want to do - always worth it.”</p><p>“I don’t think you want to spend most of your day out just chasing work. Surely. I’m earning enough doing the translations. The business was Angel’s idea and it must be two months at least since he last mentioned it. We don’t have to keep it going. You shouldn’t let it stop you from looking for something better.”</p><p>After several seconds of looking hard at Wesley, Gunn said, “Are you set against this for your sake, or my sake, or what? You really do think you can’t teach me enough, or I got the wrong image or somethin’?”</p><p>“Charles.” A long, serious pause. “I doubt if I have anything to teach you. But I’d never ask you to do that for Angel Investigations, when you don’t have to.”</p><p>Gunn frowned. “You sound like you’d be asking me to eat broken glass, or somethin’. I like gettin’ out and talkin’ to people. Figurin’em out. Tryin’ to talk ‘em round. ‘s what I was doing when I asked you out to lunch that time. Which didn’t turn out anythin’ like I’d planned.”</p><p>Another pause, with Wesley looking like he was replaying his memories of that lunch, seeing them from a different angle. Then, nodding: “You do enjoy it, don’t you? We’re so different. I hadn’t - Probably because Angel seemed to hate it in the same way I do.” Slowly: “This must be the difference that lets you… make that first move with someone.” Without taking his gaze from Gunn’s face, Wesley lifted his hand from the rock, and placed it lightly on Gunn’s arm, just above the wrist.</p><p>“I guess.” Gunn wanted to look down, to see Wesley’s hand as well as feel it. How far was he now from the point of envying everything, but everything, that Wesley touched? But he didn’t look down, because they were at the beach with people all around, and they had to look like they were just friends and when a friend touches you on the arm, you both know it’s casual, last thing you’d do is stare like it had never happened before. “Time to head home? Unless you know a place near here where I can kiss you without worrying that we’re about to have garbage thrown at us.”</p><p>Wesley smiled and stood up. “Home.”</p><p>Gunn drove. They were halfway home when Wesley said, “Given all the ways we’re different, it’s fortunate that we both happen to be a disgrace to the fine cause of Gay Pride. I know I should be blazingly angry that we can’t do something as simple and harmless as kiss on the beach, when there were straight couples all around us who wouldn’t have to think twice about it. I’ve known men who’d regard every situation like that as a chance to make a point. Take a stand. And who had very little patience with any gay man who wasn’t as angry with the state of the world as they thought he should be.”</p><p>Gunn shrugged. He’d never met anyone like that – had hardly talked to any gay men – but he could imagine. “There’s only so many battles I want to fight. Not like I’ve ever really lied about it, and I’ve never felt ashamed of it, wanted to be different. But I won’t go lookin’ for trouble.”</p><p>“Exactly. Well, I’ve frequently wanted to be different, but not because of that.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>First thing on Monday morning, Gunn started working through the Angel Investigations filing system. Well, working through the files, anyway, ‘cos there wasn’t much of a system. All of the files contained a sheet with names, addresses and telephone numbers, most files had a second sheet giving the basis for fees and lists of hours and expenses, and some even had a copy of a printed invoice, but the title on the invoice was sometimes the only clue about what the case had involved. Yes, usually there were some scribbled notes that must have been from a first phone call (“chanting in basement”, “green gunk”) and sometimes these included a guess about what was behind the weirdness (“Vernal ritual - botched or corrupted?”, “Garnax demon?”), but if you wanted to know what Angel Investigations had found or done, you’d never get it from the files. At best you’d get a page of notes in Wesley’s handwriting about a particular demon, or a printout of a web page. Never anything as helpful as “Yes, it was a Garnax demon, and it had moved into that house in that area at that time because…”</p><p>Gunn read everything in each file, made his own sheet of notes and question on each case, then sorted the files into chronological order and in the afternoon he and Wesley went through Gunn’s questions, starting with the most-recent case. After a couple of hours they had dealt with all of the cases that Wesley had worked on, and Wesley said that he knew very little about the earlier cases. “We’ll have to ask Angel. I suppose you could look on the computer as well. I think Doyle might have kept some notes there. He was the one who really used the computer.”</p><p>“You’ve got a computer? And who’s Doyle?”</p><p>“He had the visions before Angel. He joined Angel…” A pause. “…was sent to join Angel soon after Angel got set up in L.A.” Wesley looked serious and uncomfortable.</p><p>“I’m guessing he’s dead.”</p><p>Wesley nodded. “He died saving Angel. A hero’s death.” A sigh. “That’s all I know. That’s all Angel would say. I don’t know if it happened because of a vision. Or if it was a case. Or just an accident. Angel took it very hard. It’s obvious from…” Wesley shook his head. “… what he won’t say. I haven’t been able to get much impression what Doyle was like, not from what he wrote in the files or anything else, but I think he must have been -” Wesley looked into Gunn’s eyes, with a tender, admiring expression so similar to the one he’d worn at the beach that Gunn held his breath, waiting for Wesley to touch him. “I think he must have been a lot like you.”</p><p>After a few seconds Gunn released his breath. “Sounds like I shouldn’t ask Angel about him.”</p><p>“Not directly, no.”</p><p>“So where’s the computer?”</p><p>The computer was an iMac, and it was kept well out of sight, in a closet near the front door. Wesley turned it on, showed Gunn the invoices and then the little he knew about looking for other files. Gunn explored on his own for a while but found nothing that seemed to be related to the cases, apart from what looked like a file of calculations for the invoices.</p><p>“Was Doyle the one who got on the internet? There was web stuff in some of the files.”</p><p>“He must have been. I don’t think we can do that here, though. We brought the machine from the office.”</p><p>“Don’t you just plug it into the phone?”</p><p>“I don’t know how it works.” Wesley looked slightly panicked, and Gunn guessed Wesley thought of computers the way - well, the way most people thought of demons and magic (which was kind of cute). Not that Gunn knew much himself, but now that he finally had a computer of his own, he was gonna find out how to use it properly.</p><p>Angel was only able to answer about a third of the questions Gunn asked him, and Gunn was gonna pretty much ignore most of those answers, since Angel was obviously confusing some of the early cases with later ones that Wesley had already covered. After about half an hour and fewer than ten cases, Angel’s concentration dropped to the point where he didn’t understand that Gunn and Wesley were talking about things that had happened in the past. He started trying to organise them to investigate the cases, and got puzzled and angry very quickly when they didn’t do what they were supposed to do. Gunn made a show of getting ready to go out and work on the cases while Wesley reassured and distracted Angel, and in the end Angel went to his room after only the slightest suggestion from Wesley.</p><p>“Ask him again later. Ask him about all of those cases again. He might remember more and he’s unlikely to be annoyed with you for asking again.”</p><p>Gunn nodded. “Looked like that was way too much for him. I’ll just ask him about one case at a time.”</p><p>Warning: “That might take you weeks. And a lot of things, he’ll never remember.”</p><p>“Gotta try. And you know more about those cases than you’d said.”</p><p>“Than I’d realised.” A shrug. “He gave me details in passing, I suppose. We certainly never sat down and talked about them.”</p><p>Gunn spent the rest of the afternoon working with the small set of cases he was sure about, pinpointing each case on a map of L.A., putting the details in the computer, and printing out lists. In the process, he also decided on his first plan to find more business: he was going to start by choosing three clients to contact, three neighbourhoods to investigate, and three advertising methods to test. He had ideas already for each three, but he wanted Wesley’s opinion before he’d make the final choice, especially about the clients. When he’d done everything he could with those clients, neighbourhoods and methods, then he’d make a second plan and so on. No one could make him believe he would ever run out of ideas or give up hope.</p><p>Angel came out of his room early in the evening, asking about their training session, and then asking what they were talking about, what Gunn was doing. Wesley explained the plan, and Angel was interested and enthusiastic. “Why haven’t we done this before? We haven’t, right?”</p><p>“Because we’re both introverts. Charles is a normal person.”</p><p>Angel agreed with Gunn’s choices for neighbourhoods and advertising and his reasons for those choices, but suggested two different clients, from the early days of the business. Gunn found the files for those cases and this time Angel was able to answer almost all of Gunn’s questions. Angel was still alert when they came back from the training session, so Gunn asked him about another two cases. Then they sat around and had a beer and talked about L.A. and modern weapon-makers and sword-fight movies, until Angel said he was starting to lose track and wished them goodnight.</p><p>“You’re good for him, Charles.”</p><p>“Seem to be. Dunno why. You’d think he’d find it hard to get used to me being here. Feel lost or something.”</p><p>“Maybe he was bored. You give him the right stimulation. He did say I was too predictable.”</p><p>Gunn immediately disagreed, as he had to, but he couldn’t help feeling pleased with himself. It had been a good day, good enough to make both body and mind feel stoked and to put him in the mood for a lot of energetic sex - so he needed to find out if it had been the same sort of good day for Wesley. It had. Definitely it had.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>On Tuesday, Wesley phoned the two chosen clients that he had dealt with personally, and asked if they would be willing to speak to Angel Investigations’ new head of Business Development. One agreed immediately, but the other seemed embarrassed about having ever asked for their help. Wesley put up more of a fight than Gunn would have expected (“Yes, Mr. Jordan, maybe they were some rare type of rat and not a nest of Nebinec demons at all. But would you agree that treating with them as if they were Nebinec demons did get rid of them more effectively than treating them as if they were rats?”), but he let it go far short of a confrontation. Wesley offered to call one of the other clients they’d discussed, but Gunn said that could wait.</p><p>“I’d save your energy for getting Angel ready to make the call to his client. I got enough to keep me busy today.”</p><p>By the end of the day, Gunn had his own business cards made up, copied straight from Wesley’s and describing him as a “Partner” in Angel Investigations - whatever anyone wanted to make of that. He’d also found out (by asking a salesman in Best Buy) what he needed to do to connect their computer to the internet, and which were the best books for getting started with an iMac. And he’d also driven around El Segundo, Westwood and Fairfax, checking out the places where the demons had lived and hunted (or partied all night, or sunbathed naked), and looking for likely places to find the next pack of demons, or to meet people who might have seen them. He’d be back later in the week, when he’d learned enough about the neighbourhoods and their problems to make himself worth talking to.</p><p>In the evening after they’d trained and eaten, Gunn set to work on the computer, and within half an hour he was connected to the internet. He and Wesley tested it out by looking for the web pages that Doyle had printed, then Wesley suggested moving the computer out of the closet and onto the dining table if Gunn was going to be using it every day. “I’d rather not have it on my desk. I have a way of working. Laying things out.”</p><p>Gunn smiled, feeling affectionate. “And you’re still spooked by the thing. Admit it.”</p><p>Wesley shrugged. “If I could still type properly I’d probably think it was worth giving it the space. As it is, I’m happy enough with the results I get using pen and paper.”</p><p>Of course. Gunn hadn’t taken the typing into account, because he hadn’t seen Wesley trying to type, only using the mouse. “You must be able to get one-handed keyboards.”</p><p>“We can look into it. Or we can add ‘Head of Computing’ to your business card. Experiment with division of labour.”</p><p>Gunn laughed, then started shutting down the computer to move it over to the dining table.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Gunn spent most of Wednesday and Thursday reading about his three neighbourhoods, both online and at the library, looking for stories that might turn out to be about demons, that would get him started with asking people about their neighbourhood weirdness. He was concentrating on El Segundo for now, hoping to be ready to hit the ground before the end of the week.</p><p>On Wednesday evening they had their training later than usual because Gunn had his first meeting with one of the clients, in a bar a few miles from the client’s home. Mostly he just let the man talk, because the guy clearly enjoyed talking about the Foa demon: how he’d realised that something very strange was going on with his new neighbour, how the police refused to see anything, even when they were staring right at the spines and the scales and everything, and how he’d found Angel Investigations from the Yellow Pages.</p><p>“I tell you, you’d save people like me a lot of time if you’d get a box entry, say something like, ‘You’ve tried the rest, now try the only outfit in town that isn’t a bunch of creepy deluded freaks.’ OK, I wasn’t sure right off, because they’re both kind of… intense, you know? But then the way they listened, they weren’t just waiting for what they wanted to hear. And the boss did a drawing with me - he started out as a police artist, right? - and the English guy found them right away in his books, said they do this, they were starting a colony in the area. Police hadn’t seen them ‘cos when you get up close - like when they open the door to you - they have this way of making you see them as normal. Probably wouldn’t kill me just for the sake of it, but they weren’t gonna be good neighbours, not once they’d all got dug in.”</p><p>“Boy. So what happened?”</p><p>“The English guy did this… I guess it was a spell on the house, to make it so people could see them.” A smirk. “And the boss paid them a visit. That was cool.”</p><p>“He killed them?”</p><p>A shrug. “Said he got them to leave. Made sure they’d never come back. Worth every cent. Wish I could tell my other neighbours what I saved them from, though. My wife even doesn’t know half of it. That’s the main thing you guys gotta get past, you ask me - the fact that it all sounds so crazy.”</p><p>The man was right, of course. There were any number of nuts out there who set themselves up as “vampire hunters”, who could see the signs of a demon apocalypse in every extra-red sunset or every howling dog. The little freaks had kept on finding Gunn and the crew, and the way they could talk and talk… All thought they were the centre of the world, acted like the crew might not even be good enough to join their team, might not be ready to hear “the great truth”. And nearly every one had had a business card. Where could you advertise, what could you say, to show sane people that Angel Investigations was the one number that they needed to call?</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Early on Thursday evening, Angel got a vision. When it hit, Angel was in his room, Wesley was on the couch with the newspaper and a mug of tea, and Gunn was at the computer checking out the websites for some of their competitors.</p><p>“Oh, damn!”</p><p>Gunn turned his head, and found that Wesley had thrown the paper aside and was running towards Angel’s room. Gunn leapt to his feet, took a step in the same direction as Wesley. “Wesley, what’s -” Angel cried out, and there was a loud thud, and more cries, all strangled, agonised, and urgent. Wesley flung the door open, then grabbed a plant spray from the shelf outside the door, and ran in. Gunn was just a few steps behind him.</p><p>Angel was on the floor between the bed and the open wardrobe. Now Gunn could hear a dull banging in time with the cries, and a slower, dragging noise.</p><p>“Push the bed out of the way.” Wesley was pushing at the bed with his thigh, but keeping his gaze fixed on Angel. He was keeping his distance, too, and he was holding the spray up like a weapon. Gunn hauled on the heavy iron frame of the bed, and moved the bed by two or three feet. “That’s fine. That’s enough.” The cries had stopped, though Angel was breathing heavily, almost panting, and the sounds of movement were much slower and more deliberate; Angel must be trying to get to his feet, and now Wesley had put the spray down and was moving in to steady Angel, and guide him to the edge of the bed to sit down.</p><p>“Wesley? Was this a vision? Is it over?”</p><p>“It’s over. He’ll show us, any moment now. He’ll tell us.”</p><p>And Angel was starting to mutter, seeming to shake the words out as he slammed the heel of his hand over and over against his forehead. “Protect. Champion. Tribunal. Bounty. Help. Protect. More. Champion.”</p><p>“Charles. Could you get a pad and a pencil from the bottom drawer of my desk?”</p><p>The bottom drawer held a stack of drawing pads and a box full of sharpened pencils. Gunn was holding the pad and pencil out to Wesley when Angel snatched them from him and immediately started drawing on the cover of the pad.</p><p>“A clean sheet, Angel. Use a clean sheet.” Wesley leaned in to turn over the page, and Angel carried right on drawing. He was still muttering, the same jumble of six or seven words, but from time to time his head would jerk violently to the side, like he was trying to escape from something, and each time he would give the same startled moan.</p><p>“Do you understand what he’s saying?”</p><p>Wesley shook his head. “I’ve given up trying to understand what he says at this stage. You can never see how it relates to the vision, and it’s always too vague to help us. And he doesn’t know what he’s saying, can’t comment on it afterwards, whereas he does know what he’s drawing, can recall the visions exactly. If we’re lucky he’ll be able to talk in the next stage, tell us things he hasn’t drawn, give us clues about where and when.”</p><p>They were standing one on either side of Angel, so they could see what he was drawing: a demon with large, curving horns, and with tusks that looked like they could rip through a man’s thigh. The demon in the drawing was snarling straight at them, about to leap into the attack. Angel tore the sheet off, thrust it at Wesley, then started another drawing.</p><p>“D’you know what it is? He’s exaggeratin’, right? And tell me this next drawing’s gonna show us how to kill it.” Angel really could draw. The client Gunn had met the night before had asked if Angel used to be a police artist, and yeah Angel was getting in all the details that’d get you to recognise the demon if you saw it, but the drawing was better than that: it had life to it, enough to make Gunn want to reach for an axe right there, because Angel had brought the threat that close to home.</p><p>Wesley said slowly, “I think it’s a mountain dweller, from those tusks and horns and the way the hair grows. Crawford would be the place to start looking.” Wesley left the room but came back quickly with a thick book, then sat in Angel’s chair, switched on the reading light, and started turning pages like he was on a tight, urgent search-pattern.</p><p>“Wes? Is he OK like this? Wha’do I do if he… I dunno.”</p><p>“What’s he drawing?”</p><p>“Same demon, ‘s all. Head’s turned, looks like it’s lunging. God, he’s - You should see the claws.”</p><p>“If he tears the page out, take it from him. It doesn’t sound as if I need to see it, not for the identification.” Wesley hadn’t looked up from the book. “He’s in the stage now where he has to show us what he saw, he can’t help himself. That will ease off, he’ll slowly give up drawing. After that…” Wesley shook his head. “It depends.” A brief glance at Angel. “I think we’ll be lucky this time: he’ll be fit to talk to us.”</p><p>“You’re sure he won’t turn violent?”</p><p>Another shake of the head. “It would have started during the vision. We’d be backed against the door right now, holding him off with the holy water.”</p><p>The plant spray, Wesley must mean. It must be full of holy water. Gunn took a quick look at the bottle, which was lying on its side at the foot of the bed. Wesley might have taken off those pictures of plants and bugs, painted a cross on it or something. If Gunn was a vampire he’d take that thing as an insult, get even madder. As Angel kept on drawing and shuddering and Wesley kept on turning pages, Gunn thought about the problem of the holy water, how to give it style.</p><p>“It’s a Prio Motu.” Wesley’s voice was quiet, like he was speaking to himself. “Oh. Bugger. Angel, I hope you’ll be fit to do more than talk.”</p><p>“What’s a Prio Motu? So it’s as bad as it looks?”</p><p>“It’s Himalayan, and ferocious, and almost unstoppable. Think grizzly bear with road-rage.”</p><p>“Ouch. So no clues in that book about how to kill it, either?”</p><p>“Not really.” Wesley handed the book to Gunn, then walked past him to sit on the bed next to Angel.</p><p>“This is all about their wars and history and stuff. Jeez, they like to fight! Hey, maybe we’re supposed to slow him down by knowing all the dates. ‘What about the time the Heebie-Jeebies and the Tutti-Fruttis fought for five days straight over a stray goat? Man, was that the makin’ of General Shiny-Horns, or what?’ ”</p><p>Wesley laughed, then: “I think he’s stopping.” A pause. “Angel? Angel, can you talk to me?”</p><p>The muttering and the drawing were definitely becoming slower. Suddenly they stopped altogether, and Angel slumped forward. The pencil fell to the floor and bounced once, and then the room seemed to freeze into silence, like everything inside it was tense with waiting, even the air.</p><p>Angel stirred from the slump after just a few seconds, or so Gunn guessed from the time after he had started counting his own heartbeats. He slowly raised his head to look at Gunn, stared at him, frowning, then turned quickly to Wesley when Wesley spoke his name.</p><p>“There’s a big demon. Horns. Big horns. Fangs. Fierce. Really angry. Set… Set…” Angel was moving his hand in emphasis or frustration or both. “Won’t give up.”</p><p>“I think it’s a Prio Motu. Is this what you saw? Charles, could you…?” Gunn was already holding the book out to Angel.</p><p>As soon as Angel saw the picture he leapt to his feet and grabbed the book. “Where is it? How do we find it?”</p><p>“That’s the big question. Let’s try to answer it with the other books, next door.”</p><p>Gunn led the way to the living room, Wesley brought the pad and pencil with him, and they all sat at the dining table. “So you didn’t recognise the place?”</p><p>“Tunnels. All tunnels.”</p><p>“Tunnels that you didn’t recognise. Well, that narrows it down. What were the tunnels like? Were they damp? Did they have a smell?”</p><p>At first Wesley was the one asking the questions and making the suggestions, but Gunn soon joined in. The tunnels were made of concrete, not brick. They were square, not round. Dry. Clean. Well-lit. No graffiti. No garbage. Stairways with handrails, and the handrails weren’t rusted. Racks of pipes on the ceilings. Smell might be oil. And a low but powerful throbbing sound. Something industrial, obviously, but where? Angel filled sheet after sheet with drawings of details, and finally there was a drawing that gave an impression that the tunnels were deep, really deep, and that started Gunn thinking in a new direction.</p><p>“Angel, do you know the tunnels underneath Boyle Heights, near the DWP?” Angel shook his head. “We cleaned a nest of vamps out of there a year ago. I think it all fits. We should go check it out.”</p><p>Wesley took a sword, Gunn took his axe, and Angel took a sword and a mace. Gunn drove while Wesley sat in the back with Angel and asked more questions, trying to find out who they had been sent to save and how the Prio Motu was likely to fight. Angel thought he had seen someone behind the demon, running away, but not running properly, instead moving strangely, as if already injured.</p><p>Angel knew immediately that they’d come to the right place. But it was a large place, and almost every corridor and stairway looked just like the ones in the vision. They headed downwards, keeping as quiet as possible, listening hard for sounds of growling, or sobbing - or anything. They had reached the fourth level down when Angel suddenly stopped, pointed upwards, and led the way back up the stairs. By the second level, Gunn could hear the noises too: running footsteps, panicked breathing, and a low, menacing snarl. The demon must be dragging his victim towards the stairway.</p><p>When there was only one set of stairs between them and the demon, the three of them paused and looked at one another, an instinctive sharing of courage that Gunn had seen over and over again with his crew. Gunn was about to take that crucial, bracing breath when he got a better idea, shook his head vehemently, pointed to the corridor around the corner from the landing, and immediately headed towards it, gesturing with his head for Angel and Wesley to follow.</p><p>He stopped them just past the line of sight to the stairway and whispered, “Ambush.”</p><p>The others nodded and Wesley leaned in close to Gunn and whispered, “Angel and I will go for the Prio Motu, get it away from the stairs or drive it down. You get the victim up the stairs and out to somewhere safe.” Gunn nodded, saw Angel do the same, and then they took up positions with a view of the stairway and waited as the sounds came quickly towards them.</p><p>The victim was a pregnant woman, and the sight of that, of her holding her belly, being pulled down into the earth by a monster… This was sick, the universe was sick, to let this happen. Gunn pushed at Angel’s back to get him to start the charge, but Angel didn’t move until the demon was almost at the landing - and those moments of waiting were long enough for Gunn to scare himself with the idea that Angel might have lost his focus, forgotten everything about why they needed to fight.</p><p>The woman screamed when she saw them, and Gunn had to stand and see her terrified, had to wait for Angel and Wesley to force the monster far enough away from her before he could get in and prove to her that she was safe now, it was over. He tried to help her up the stairs but she was struggling so hard, almost like she was fighting him, and nothing he said seemed to be getting through - she’d even started sobbing, and her voice was raw as she screamed at him.</p><p>“You bastards. Oh, God, you sick, sick bastards. My baby. My baby. Oh, no, please. Not an axe. Not my baby. Kamal, help me. Help my baby. Don’t let them do that to my baby. Help me.”</p><p>Gunn dropped the axe. “I’m not going to hurt you. We’re not part of this, we’re nothing to do with that thing. We were sent here to save you from it. You’re safe now.”</p><p>A second of frozen disbelief, then: “Oh, God! How stupid do you think I am? How stupid are you? You’re killing my one protector and you’re telling me I’m safe?”</p><p>Gunn didn’t know how long his own stunned silence lasted. “You’re saying that demon was protecting you. He never hurt you? He wasn’t bringing you here to -”</p><p>“Like you didn’t know that! Waiting here with your -”</p><p>Gunn leapt down the stairs and ran towards the sounds of battle. “Stop! Stop! Wesley, stop! Angel! The Prio Motu wasn’t hurting her. It wasn’t what we thought. She says he was protecting her. You have to stop. Angel, you have to stop! We weren’t sent here to fight it.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Jo’s baby was going to grow up to be this great prophet, but there were some people prepared to pay a lot of money to see that never happened. Kamal had been sent to protect Jo, and also to fight as her Champion in some weird Tribunal that was set for Friday night. If he won in the Tribunal, then Jo and her baby would get protection at a whole different level, so no one would be able to touch them. But the Tribunal was still a day away, and the bounty-hunters weren’t giving up, nothing like it: there were two attacks during the night, and a third early on Friday afternoon.</p><p>After the second attack they discussed moving out of the tunnels, but it would probably only buy them a few hours before they were found again (judging by what Jo and Kamal had already been through), and no one could suggest a base that would be strong enough to justify the dangers involved in moving. Kamal did not believe that there would be a massed attack: he had seen no sign that the groups of hunters were starting to co-ordinate their efforts, and for the four of them against a group of three or less, they had proved that the tunnels were a good defensive position.</p><p>Angel, Gunn and Kamal stayed in the tunnels throughout, until the time came on Friday night to get Kamal and Jo to 4<sup>th</sup> and Spring for the Tribunal. Wesley went out briefly on Friday morning to get food and blood. They set Angel outside Kamal’s cell as the last line of defence, and Kamal, Gunn and Wesley took it in turn to sit guard along the approaches. Angel’s focus wasn’t sure enough for him to be left alone on the perimeter, not for that length of time, but he could be relied upon to fight single-mindedly if he was attacked there at the cell.</p><p>Gunn’s main memory of those long hours in the tunnels was of missing Wesley. The boredom of standing guard, he already knew, and the terror and elation of battle. He knew that you always spent a fair part of the time planning what you would do as soon as you got out, looking forward to that bath, that first beer, the biggest, hottest pepperoni pizza in the world. This time, though, pushing out even the thought of the bath and the beer, was the moment when he would be able to leave his post and just walk down the corridor to Wesley and sit next to him and look at him, and finally find out what they would choose to talk about first, how they would choose to touch. He knew that they would have left the tunnels before then, that there wouldn’t be that clear “moment”; it would be lost in whatever clean-up followed a Tribunal, in driving Angel home. But that was the image for him of missing Wesley: Wesley standing guard alone at the other end of a long corridor.</p><p>They all agreed not to try to use Angel’s car for the journey to 4<sup>th</sup> and Spring; the chances were too great that it had been found, and that they would be facing the wrong side of an ambush. So they headed out in another direction, and Gunn hot-wired the first suitable truck they came across. Kamal thought the Tribunal would have to take place somewhere underneath 4<sup>th</sup> and Spring, and they were waiting for a door to open up when the time came, but instead Kamal and Jo just disappeared from the truck. Gunn, Wesley and Angel had no idea how long they should wait, if they should even wait at all and Wesley was busy blaming himself for not knowing everything about the Tribunal when Kamal and Jo were right there, standing in the road a few yards from the truck.</p><p>Gunn drove Jo to her apartment in Silverlake then took the truck back to Boyle Heights and left it where they’d found it, a few blocks away from Angel’s car. Kamal got out and made for the tunnels without a word, which was exactly what Gunn had expected; Kamal had seemed genuinely devoted to Jo, but had treated the three of them as nothing more than weapons. Jo had managed to thank them at the appropriate times, but had never managed to hide the fact that she was accepting them only on Kamal’s judgement; each one of them freaked her out, and that she couldn’t forgive them for the attack on Kamal.</p><p>If Angel’s car had been found, it hadn’t been disabled, and Gunn got them home shortly before two on Saturday morning. They were all exhausted, and showing it. Angel went straight to the bathroom, and Gunn heard the sound of the shower through the open door.</p><p>“There’s a message.” Wesley was standing by the desk, looking down at the phone. “Do we play it, or just accept that fact that whoever it is isn’t going to get any help until tomorrow?”</p><p>Gunn couldn’t imagine Wesley ever accepting any such fact. “Up to you, English.”</p><p>Wesley played the message, which was for Gunn, from Anne. “Um… I hope this is the right number to reach Charles Gunn. If not, I’m sorry for bothering you. Charles, Dean and George were here for the class today and they told me what’s happened. Well, something of what’s happened, I’m guessing. They said they didn’t know where you were, but I took another guess at that, and… um… Anyway, you know I hate to lose touch with friends so you’ll give me a call, won’t you?”</p><p>“It must be from Thursday, unless they changed the class to today.” Gunn was wondering what they’d said to her, what they’d said that she’d worked out he must be with Wesley. “I’ll get back to her tomorrow.”</p><p>“It was nice of her to call.” Wesley sounded uncertain, which couldn’t be about Anne herself, must be about the whole issue of Gunn and the crew. They’d not talked about the crew since the day Gunn had moved in.</p><p>“Yeah.” Gunn was going to say more, something to show Wesley that he wasn’t bothered by this reminder, that they could talk or not talk, whatever they wanted, but at that point Angel walked, naked, out of the bathroom. He crossed the living-room without looking at them, like they weren’t there, and shut himself in his bedroom. Gunn swallowed, thought Wesley had, too. Still staring at the closed door, Gunn said, “OK, he’s beautiful.” A grudging sigh. “Even all slouching like that, he’s beautiful.”</p><p>Wesley nodded. “I keep wondering what he’d be like if he could see himself in the mirror. The way people look at him, though, that’s probably as good as a mirror.” Then he laughed, and the tension was gone from the room. “I had been about to suggest we went straight to bed, but now that doesn’t seem quite the right thing to say.”</p><p>“No. No, y’can’t say that just now. I’d take it all wrong.” Then Gunn grabbed Wesley, kissed him hard, and held him so they could both feel exactly what the sight of Angel had done to each of them. With his lips against Wesley’s cheek, grazed by stubble: “Guess we’ll have to play tic-tac-toe out here till we’re sure we’ve both forgotten about him. Need at least an hour, I reckon, before we’d be safe to think ‘bout goin’ to bed.” This was what Wesley wanted, wasn’t it? To treat it like a joke?</p><p>Like a joke or an outright turn-on, which was fine with Gunn. Wesley pulled him into a harder, deeper kiss, and at first Gunn did wonder how much Wesley was thinking about Angel, but that didn’t matter as long as it got him Wesley like this. When they were both gasping, Wesley said, “Would that be strip tic-tac-toe?”</p><p>Took Gunn a few seconds to remember where the tic-tac-toe came from. “Could be. Could be. Y’know, why don’t we say we been playin’ for an hour. And you lost every game.” He started unbuttoning Wesley’s shirt, and backing him towards the bedroom.</p><p>“Every game for an hour? That’s a lot of naked I owe you.”</p><p>“Don’t I know it?”</p><p>Gunn undressed himself in record time, but when he joined Wesley in bed the first words he heard were: “Charles? How badly would you take it if I fell asleep in the next minute?”</p><p>“You’re kiddin’ me.”</p><p>But Wesley wasn’t joking. He was clearly having to force himself to keep his eyes open. “It was lying down. My brain feels as if it’s leaking out of my head. ‘s ‘n jet lag. I’m… I’m… But I can’t…” His eyes sank closed and his breathing suddenly became much slower. Indistinctly: “You should…” Suddenly he came awake, startled, stared blinking at Gunn for several seconds, then gave a slow smile and raised his hand a few inches off the bed. “But don’t fuck me. That’s…” He was asleep again.</p><p>Gunn waited for nearly a minute, though he didn’t know what for, since anyone could see that he and his cock were on their own. Well, for a clue about what the hell Wesley had been saying. Fucking him was what? Something he’d changed his mind about? But Wesley had been smiling at him.</p><p>So take the smile, let the rest go. Wesley had been as good as dreaming, he could have been thinking anything. Just let it go.</p><p>Gunn leaned over Wesley to take his glasses off, but then was held looking down at him, feeling the lines of the sleeping face warm and rough under his hand. Yes, Wesley could have been thinking anything. Gunn would never be able to guess the half of it. Wesley wasn’t beautiful. Gunn didn’t know that he was even handsome - he was so thin, so reserved, looking at him you had to see that first, either judge him or worry for him. But once you’d started to know him, you realised that just looking at his face was better than the deepest conversation you’d ever had with anyone else. Every proof of strength and doubt and passion and coldness that Gunn had found in Wesley so far, they were always there clear to read in his face. And the power of his mind, his strange, foreign thoughts - his face warned you how far you had come out of your depth.</p><p>“Turns out I like that, English. Bein’ out of my depth with you.” Gunn brought his face down to Wesley’s as he whispered, not touching, but close enough to feel Wesley’s breath. Would have thought he’d hate it. Always been top dog. But Wesley wasn’t any kind of pack animal, was he? He’d read about people like Gunn, he knew the theory. But that wasn’t where he lived. So how could a top dog resent what Wesley did to him? Gunn sighed and smiled. “Even when you grow a day and a half of stubble and then fall asleep on me.”</p><p>He kissed the corner of Wesley’s mouth, meaning just a simple goodnight, but seemed like nothing could be really simple when it was him close to Wesley: the roughness of the stubble caught him almost like a shock, so much rougher against his lips than it had felt against his hand. His lips felt the softness of Wesley’s lips, too, right next to the stubble, and they were warm and moist and yielding. Gunn’s cock loved the roughness, it loved the softness, it wanted to fuck both feelings and it wanted to do it now.</p><p>Gunn groaned and pushed himself away from Wesley. He lay on his back with his eyes closed tight and his hands clenched down by his side, really wanting to jerk off but pretty-sure he shouldn’t. “Not under my roof,” Wesley had said. Wesley wouldn’t want him to jerk off. But it was Gunn’s roof now, and Wesley had got him hot and then fallen asleep on him.</p><p>Didn’t help, either, to be thinking about Wesley not wanting him to jerk off, because that just made him remember exactly how Wesley had been the last time. How his face had gone so hard and cold, how he’d said, “Will you use my mouth or do you need to fuck me?”</p><p>Gunn groaned again, and now he had to keep his hips from rocking, as well as keep his hands by his side. He tried to think about something else, but he couldn’t find any kind of calming thoughts in reach. There was the sight of Angel naked. There was him and Wesley happily horny from seeing Angel. And there were the hours in the tunnels, the ache of missing Wesley, having the image so clear: of the long corridor, and Wesley standing alone at the end of it.</p><p>No thought that didn’t lead to Wesley. That didn’t lead to sex. Gunn knew he should be able to control himself, he should, but at this moment he just didn’t want to. He shook his head two, three times, gave a long, unsteady sigh, then unclenched his hand and wrapped it around his cock. He thought about what Wesley might say if he woke up now, what he might do – and he let himself get so excited he cried out at the end, and made the bed slam against the wall.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>“Wes. I know it bothers you, the idea of me jerking off. Is there… Is there any way it’d be OK?” The first thing Gunn said to Wesley when they were next both awake, early on Saturday afternoon. He’d been lying awake for half an hour or more, knowing he had to tell Wesley what he’d done. Might seem like a stupid secret, something most men wouldn’t think twice about, but Gunn didn’t want to keep this one, not from Wesley.</p><p>Wesley looked surprised. “It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. In fact, I like the idea. As long as it’s… not taking you away from me. Depriving me of a fuck I’d rather like for myself.”</p><p>Gunn frowned hard, then said, “What about that first morning we woke up together? The first time I saw you with stubble. You really acted then like it bothered you.”</p><p>“I was –” Wesley sighed. “I was concerned to make the point at the time that I’m tougher than you might think. I didn’t want you to… get into the habit of holding back. Just because of the way I look. I want to have all of you.” A sudden smile. “Once I’m sure I’ve got the point made, then I’ll never act like that unless you want me to.”</p><p>“You think I’m holding back?” Gunn was frowning again, couldn’t return Wesley’s smile.</p><p>“No, no, not that I’ve seen.” Wesley reached out, laid his hand on Gunn’s shoulder. “But I don’t think we’ve done much since to put it to the test.” A shrug. “And maybe we won’t. It doesn’t matter like that, I just want to be sure I get all of you. Whatever we end up doing.”</p><p>Gunn relaxed, knowing there wasn’t any problem after all with what he’d done the night before. He might still tell Wesley how he’d jerked off – or he might not – but it didn’t feel any more like a secret he had to get rid of as soon as he could. And he’d just now found some other things he needed to say more.</p><p>He rolled to lie against Wesley, pushing his knee between Wesley’s knees, and putting his arm around Wesley’s waist. “English. Yeah, yeah, it’s somethin’ I’ve hadta think about with you: needin’ to hold myself back. Get in control. But it’s not ‘cos of how I see you, not in the way you were saying. You gotta know you’re the toughest man I ever saw. It’s ‘cos of…” He paused, then gave a long, slow sigh. “I think it’s ‘cos of some things I thought I knew about myself. And turns out I don’t. Not with you.”</p><p>Wesley had gone slightly tense. “Things like… that you’d never look twice at a white man?”</p><p>Gunn shook his head, pulled Wesley closer, then stroked his back. “Don’t think that’s any part of it. It’s more… I thought I knew how I was with sex. How far I’d let it take me. How fast. Since… since before Luke, even, I’d figured out how to keep in control. Had to with Luke, so he wouldn’t know I wanted – Yeah, I wanted all of him. And with girls… Y’learn the first thing about girls, y’know it’s the right thing to do. Else you’re just some selfish kid. Got no clue ‘bout anything ‘cept jerkin’ off. So I thought I’d got that all figured out. Gotta be pretty damn good, even. ‘n’ then I meet you.”</p><p>“And I make you lose control?” Wesley was smiling - looking pleased, but like there was something here he just didn’t believe.</p><p>“Oh, man. You say just one word or you get this look and –” He swallowed again and closed his eyes for a second. “ ‘s like I’m back when I was that selfish kid. Worse. Like I want every real thing in the world to just go away till I can get my cock what it wants.”</p><p>“Charles.” Wesley leaned in and pressed his lips briefly to Gunn’s cheek. “You are anything but selfish. You are the lover I would have dreamed of for myself. If I hadn’t ruined myself with too many of those stupid crushes. I think… you must have set a standard for yourself that no one could be expected to keep. I’ve never seen any sign of –” A shrug. “Of what you seem to be worrying about.”</p><p>“You have. ‘n’ I reckon you will again. That morning with the stubble. ‘n’ if you’d seen me last night, jerkin’ off after you fell asleep on me. When it gets me like that… feels like somethin’s taken me over. Somethin’ outside me. Gets me so hard in seconds, I –” He took a deep breath. “Some ways it’s exciting. Course it is. Other ways… still doesn’t feel like me. Dunno if I’m worryin’. Not now, anyway. Now I’m clear how you feel ‘bout jerkin’ off. ‘bout me holdin’ back. Mostly I’m just… tryin’ to figure what it is ‘bout you that gets to me. How come I never had it happen before.”</p><p>“Luke didn’t get stubble?”</p><p>Gunn shrugged. “He wouldn’t get it to look at. ‘n’ it’s the look of it on you. The feel, too, but that’s second to knowing how it looks.”</p><p>Wesley was looking thoughtful. “So maybe it is because I’m your first white man. And the bristles show on me. You’ve always had this kink, but you’ve never been in a position to realise it before.”</p><p>Gunn shook his head hard, very definite. “It’s you, Wes. It’s how it looks on you. Best guess I’ve got so far is… it’s about way it makes you look so distant. Because y’know that’s a big part of you, even without the stubble. Jeez, Wes, you’re all about holdin’ back. Not in a bad way, not like you’re playin’ games. You don’t play any games with me, you always act close. But half the day at least you look so distant, and I guess then some part of me’s always half-thinking, ‘You could’ve stayed like that for me. I might’ve never dared to touch you.’ But that’s just one part of me, for some part of the day, and for the rest I’m all: ‘Course I dared. Course he said yes. He was lookin’ all cool ‘n’ English but he’d been thinkin’ ‘bout how we’d fuck.’ So –” A deep sigh. “Y’get to me. Every day. Guess y’keep me hangin’ so close to the time you said yes. ‘n’ we know that was perfect so forget I ever said any of this and don’t try to act any different. Look any different. ‘s just… somethin’ in the way I gotta have you.”</p><p>Wesley was blinking over and over, looking amazed. He made a small sound then closed his eyes for the space of three deep breaths, and when he opened them again he still looked amazed. In a whisper: “I don’t deserve any of this.”</p><p>Gunn didn’t whisper, but he dropped his voice low. “Should be me, Wes, sayin’ that about you.” Gunn pulled Wesley close, and they kissed for a long time.</p><p>Angel was already up. Gunn had been able to hear him in the living-room from the time he’d woken up himself. There’d been some tidying-up noises: shuffling of paper, drawers opening and closing. Some clattering from the kitchen. The whir of the computer and some short bursts of typing (a big surprise to Gunn). Angel had gone quiet just before Wesley had woken up, and Gunn thought he was probably sitting reading.</p><p>“We’re not going to have sex with him just next door, are we?” Not really a question - Gunn was already resigned to the answer, knew exactly how Wesley would shake his head. “So what’ll we do with the rest of the day? We are taking the weekend off?”</p><p>“If Angel stays like this we could go out for a meal. Maybe even a film, if we can find something we agree on. Would you consider a film with the same cameraman as ‘Malcolm X’?”</p><p>“Wes, if it’s a matter of a date with you, I’d consider the same accountant. Anyway, it must have been ten years ago. And you already figured I might’ve snuck out one or two times? Even to see some piece of all-white crap.”</p><p>Wesley shook his head. “Exemptions always given for social necessity. Sometimes you just have to know what people are talking about.”</p><p>Soon after they were up, showered and breakfasted, Gunn said, “Wes? I think I’ll go over and see Anne, if she’s in. Should be back by four.”</p><p>“OK. I’ll check the paper for the film listings.”</p><p>Anne was in and could spare the time for a walk in Exposition Park. Apart from wanting to see Anne, Gunn also needed some sunshine after all those hours in the tunnels with Kamal and Jo, especially since sunshine wasn’t welcome in any room in the apartment. Gunn drove, and they ended up walking round the Rose Garden.</p><p>“Did they tell you straight off? What they say?”</p><p>Anne shook her head. “Not till I asked about you. They said you’d met some English guy. Moved in with him. Think that was all they wanted to say, but…” She shrugged. “I was surprised, asked some questions. If it was the same English guy I’d met. They were spooked. It was obvious. Kept saying they’d no idea about you. But playing it as cool as they could. There was nothing I’d hate to repeat to you or to him.”</p><p>Gunn nodded. “Yeah, they said they’d play it cool. Long as they didn’t have to pretend they were happy for me.” How bitter did he sound? Some, probably.</p><p>A few hundred yards later Anne said, “I liked him. But he’s the last person I’d think… You weren’t together back then, were you?”</p><p>“Barely met him. Didn’t know if I liked him. I don’t know how much chance you’ll have to get to know him, but… He’s like no one else I’ve ever met. He says hi. Well… ‘sends his regards’.”</p><p>They laughed, then Anne brought him up to date with the shelter, especially with the latest legal miracle from the shelter’s tame lawyers. Gunn couldn’t argue with their results and free was a great price, but he couldn’t believe this Lindsey was really the undercover idealist he seemed to be pushing to Anne. You want to help the people who really need help, you just damn well do it. You don’t choose to bide your time behind a marble desk wearing a thousand dollar suit and spend your days helping rich people to carry on doing whatever the fuck they want. If you’ve decided to go after the money, at least be honest about it. Of course, Anne might just be hearing what she wanted to hear, the man might not have done anything more than mention some news report; but from the “Lindsey did this” and “Lindsey thinks that” and “Lindsey and I are looking at ideas for Wolfram and Hart to hold a fundraiser for next year”, he guessed that Lindsey and his thousand dollar suit had some good lines between them.</p><p>“Talking about fundraising… You have to be looking for work now that you’ve… If you haven’t found anything yet, you know I can ask around.”</p><p>“Thanks, but I’ve joined Wesley in his demon business. You know, the one on his card. Hasn’t been doing well but I think I can turn it around.”</p><p>“Right. Angel Investigations. It was on the answering machine, too. The Angel part’s a person, isn’t it? It wasn’t Wesley’s voice on the machine. You said when Wesley came to the shelter that there might be two of them. And Dean told me about a fight in a thrift shop. A man who had to go sit in the car.”</p><p>“That’s Angel.” Then, sharply: “Dean told you about the thrift shop? He wasn’t even there.” So much for the crew playing it cool. Who the hell had thought it would be smart to get that story out?</p><p>Anne shook her head. “It was when we were alone for a few minutes. He seemed puzzled about what had happened. Concerned for you, I think. Wanted to know what impression I’d got of Wesley. If I knew anything more about his life. Which I don’t, so…” She shrugged. “I told him what I’d liked about Wesley, he seemed reassured. Is Angel an ex-boxer, or something?”</p><p>“What? Where’d you get that?”</p><p>“He sounds like he’s a trained fighter with brain damage. Thought he might’ve met Wesley and decided to put his prize money into a detective business.”</p><p>Gunn shook his head. “I haven’t really figured out what he did before. But he set up the business on his own. Then there was an accident that caused the brain damage. And then he met Wesley.”</p><p>“How bad’s the damage?”</p><p>“Gettin’ worse. He has good days but he can’t take care of himself now.”</p><p>“Wesley takes care of him?”</p><p>“Yeah. He stays in the apartment with us.” At Anne’s look of surprise he shrugged, then said, “I’m about used to it already. But don’t tell Dean about Angel if he asks again. Wesley won’t mind me telling you, but I don’t want the crew to get any details. They’re too angry with me. They mustn’t have anything they could use to take it out on Wesley.”</p><p>Pained: “That’s most of your friends, Charles. Some of my friends.”</p><p>“You do what you have to. I’m not at war with them, you know. Just know we need to keep out of each other’s way for a while, not force each other into doing anythin’ stupid. Few months we’ll calm down, realise the action’s moved on and no one’s checkin’ us out any more t’see how we’re takin’ it. If a reason comes along to start talkin’ again, we might even be happy to take it.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>“So what’ve you found for us?” The paper was open on the coffee table, and Gunn could see that several listings were circled.</p><p>“For ‘us’, I don’t know. Can we see what you think of what I’ve found for ‘me’?”</p><p>“‘s a place to start.”</p><p>“The 5.30 show of ‘Passion Fish’ at the Nuart in Santa Monica. And then a curry at the Gate of India. Also in Santa Monica.”</p><p>“Like the curry. Need more on the movie.”</p><p>“It’s been out for a few years. I saw it in London. It’s about a soap actress who loses the use of her legs in a car accident and goes back to where she grew up in Louisiana. Retreats there. A nurse comes to work for her who’s pulling out of a bad time of her own. It’s about… when your old life’s gone, what it takes to even want a new one. Alfre Woodard plays the nurse, if that helps. And it’s very funny in places. I don’t know if you’d like it, but I’d really like to know what you’d make of it. It stayed with me.”</p><p>Sounded like hard work to Gunn, but hell, it was only two hours out of his life. “The funny sounds good. Only one way to find out about the rest. You don’t want to eat first, though? ‘Dinner and a movie’?”</p><p>“I was thinking about Angel. I always feel that the longer I eave him, the more likely it is that he’ll have a vision. And I’d rather get the film safely out of the way first. I’m sure there’s a flaw in my reasoning. I’m missing something basic in the maths. But will you humour me until I’ve worked out the proof?”</p><p>“5.30’s fine. A couple of weeks ago I didn’t think we’d ever be able to leave him long enough for either dinner or a movie.”</p><p>Wesley insisted on sitting in an aisle seat, and went out every twenty minutes to call in to Angel; which could only suggest drug business to everyone except an innocent like Wesley. They made it safely through the movie and to the restaurant, and Gunn found out that Wesley had already spoiled him for L.A. curries. They ordered the lamb dish that Wesley had cooked for them, and it tasted good but it tasted all the same, from the first mouthful right to the last. No problem with that, you’d think - unless someone had already served you a version where every mouthful had you thinking “Damn, this is good!” like you were tasting it for the very first time; where you could eat the whole portion without figuring out the trick of how it all worked together.</p><p>They didn’t talk much about the food after Gunn had given his verdict and enjoyed Wesley’s reaction. Wesley said less when he was pleased than anyone else Gunn knew, but Gunn didn’t need words when Wesley’s face got that glow, the one that made him look years younger.</p><p>“Yeah, the movie was good. Can’t say it grabbed me - I like action. But it felt real. Like the real way people… get close, don’t get close, sort of drift round each other. Gotta respect that in a movie. And it was funny, like you’d said. And Angela Bassett was in it, so it was even OK with my ‘Malcolm X’ thing.”</p><p>“Oh yes, she was the actress friend, wasn’t she? I didn’t know who she was when I first saw the film. I hadn’t thought about that.” Wesley’s voice changed suddenly from vague interest to full enthusiasm: “I thought the scene between her and Alfre Woodard in the kitchen was very interesting, when they’re talking about their different backgrounds in Chicago. Of course, I don’t know how realistic it is, but that was the first hint I’d ever seen of deeply-rooted class distinctions between black people in America. I’m not saying it’s a good thing but it gave me a point of reference - as a typical class-ridden Englishman trying to understand a country I hadn’t yet visited - and that scene made me realise that my assumptions about how black people lived, how they related to one another were much too simple. That there must be history. And layers.”</p><p>“You’re lookin’ for history, you know you’ve come to the wrong place.”</p><p>“It’s not realistic?”</p><p>“What class is a cop?”</p><p>“Lower middle.” Wesley sounded so definite, like he was stating a law of nature.</p><p>“Then that’s as far as I go with that ‘relating’. Those teachers and lawyers and doctors, they don’t come visitin’ us. All I know’s what I see on TV. Maybe Louisiana’s one thing. My part of L.A.’s another.”</p><p>Wesley nodded. “You’d said I don’t understand the inner city. Maybe I do need to watch ‘Summer of Sam’ again.”</p><p>“You just need to meet some more of my friends. Maybe a couple of my enemies.”</p><p>Over dessert Gunn said, “Wes? In the movie, with her waking up in hospital, the physiotherapy, everything. I wondered if it was different enough that you didn’t - Or maybe it even helped?”</p><p>“Different enough from what happened to me? When I lost my arm?”</p><p>Gunn nodded.</p><p>Slowly: “It made me realise how lucky I was that Angel was there. He never tried to look as if he wanted to be, but at least he was there. And I knew he’d be there the next day, too. Seeing her alone in all those scenes in the hospital, I thought, ‘I was lucky.’ ”</p><p>Wesley took a mouthful of coffee, then stared down at the cup. Gunn waited, sure that Wesley wasn’t finished, not judging by the tone of his voice, the way he was frowning, how tense his hand was holding the cup. Suddenly, Wesley raised his head, not frowning now but looking very serious. “I’d remembered that the film started like that, though. I knew it didn’t have anything of the things that are difficult for me. But I’d forgotten that scene near the end: the dream she has where she’s sitting on the dock, and she stands up and walks to him, as if she’d done it a hundred times before, as if they both took it for granted.”</p><p>Wesley paused, then smiled at Gunn - a sad smile that made Gunn wish he could take back his question. “In all the dreams I’ve had about you, I’m able to hold you properly. My dreams won’t admit yet what’s happened.” Another pause, and a shrug. “I don’t know if the scene was really supposed to be about that. It was probably about her conscious mind, conjuring up a fantasy. But everything about the way it was shot… Yes, that’s how it feels.”</p><p>Gunn reached across the tablecloth and touched the back of his fingers to Wesley’s. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I should’ve known.”</p><p>Wesley shook his head briskly. “If I'd wished you hadn’t asked, I would have fobbed you off. Said I didn’t see any connection at all.” He pushed his hand gently against Gunn’s and smiled again, an entirely different smile. “I’m glad you asked.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>In the last half hour of the film and throughout the meal, Angel had been distracted and impatient whenever Wesley called in, so Gunn wasn’t surprised that Angel ignored them when they got back to the apartment. He was sitting in the armchair with a pad on his lap, drawing slowly, concentrating hard, and with some dramatic, clashing classical music playing loudly behind him.</p><p>“Angel? I’m going to turn the music down a bit.” Gunn wasn’t sure if Wesley was asking permission, but Angel carried on drawing anyway, and Gunn thought he might not even have been aware of the music.</p><p>The drawings weren’t like the ones Angel had made of the vision. Those had been urgent sketches, picking out just a few details like they were frozen in a spotlight - like Kamal’s face, or pipes on the ceiling. These new drawings filled in the whole scene - a room, a street, a forest - but all drawn very small, small enough that he could fit six or seven on the same page.</p><p>“What’s he doing?”</p><p>Wesley shrugged. “Drawing for pleasure, I think. I didn’t know he had more than one style.” A pause. “We could try to get him to move next door.”</p><p>“He’s OK. You’re still just looking for a couple of hours reading, right? Might have moved himself by the time we’re ready for bed.”</p><p>Gunn had meant to spend Wesley’s reading time working through the beginner’s book he’d got for the computer, but after a couple of chapters he learned enough to find out there were some games on the computer, and then obviously he had to try every one of them out. At some point he noticed the music wasn’t playing any more, and he wondered what game he’d been playing when it had stopped.</p><p>“What was the movie like?” Gunn started at the sound of Angel’s voice, clicked in the wrong square, and saw immediately that he would be going back to Level 1 again with the pipe-laying.</p><p>“I enjoyed it even more than I did the first time.” Wesley was so smooth at dealing with these changes in Angel; he acted like they’d just come in the door and sat down, and Angel was asking the question like a normal roommate. “I don’t think Charles will be looking to see it again, though.”</p><p>“I see why Wes likes it at lot, but… dunno who I’d see it with, apart from Wes. All my friends’d think it was too slow. Not really about anything. Not even a happy ending for the chicks. There’s just a kind of buzz we expect to get from a movie, y’know? They’d never let me forget it.”</p><p>Wesley looked amused. “I can see I’m going to learn a lot when you choose the next one.”</p><p>“I’d like to see a movie.” Angel sounded wistful.</p><p>Wesley and Angel had had this conversation before, Gunn could tell: Wesley was sympathetic but very firm. “You can’t have a vision in a cinema, Angel. You just can’t.” Angel nodded, gave a slight shrug, and turned his attention back to his drawing pad.</p><p>“What about in a car, though? Couldn’t we go to a drive-in?” Gunn saw Wesley wince, then shake himself into looking interested and optimistic. Wesley the movie snob. This was gonna be fun.</p><p>“A drive-in?” Angel looked like he didn’t want to be too hopeful. “But the nearest one’s probably thirty miles away. And what sort of movies do they show these days? Is it worth driving to Pomona to see ‘Night of the Giant Crabs’?”</p><p>“Hell, yes! ‘Night of the Giant Crabs’, Wes? Bet you wouldn’t get a chance like that back home.”</p><p>Wesley raised his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t. We don’t have drive-ins.” He leaned forward and picked up the paper from the coffee table. “Where is the nearest drive-in? I didn’t notice any when I was checking the listings.”</p><p>“I think there’s a couple out east. Closer than Pomona. Should be something online if it isn’t in the paper.”</p><p>“Could you look into it some time? I don’t know about Angel but I might need a few weeks to get myself in the perfect mood for ‘Night of the Giant Crabs’.”</p><p>Gunn and Angel looked at one another and smiled, then Gunn said, “What you been drawin’, Angel? You been workin’ on that all evening, looks like.”</p><p>Angel looked down at the pad, then frowned, held it up, and started flipping slowly back through the pages. Gunn saw more of the small scenes on the first page Angel turned, but the other five or six pages were the usual large sketches. When Angel got to the beginning of the pad he stared at the cover for several seconds, then worked through the pages again, even more slowly than before. At the third blank page he stopped and looked up at Wesley. “Is it a story? I know there are connections, but I can’t… What are we supposed to do?”</p><p>“Admire your talent, Angel, that’s all. You were listening to music. I think it must have stirred associations for you.”</p><p>Angel turned to look at the hi-fi system then back at Wesley. He nodded several times, then got to his feet, let the pad fall to the floor, and went straight to the kitchen and into his routine for feeding himself. Wesley picked the pad up and put it in the desk drawer, then sat down and went back to his reading. Gunn started the game again.</p><p>“Goodnight?” Angel was standing at the door of his room, hand on the doorknob. He looked totally disoriented, could even have been asking if it was night or morning.</p><p>Wesley a split-second before Gunn: “Goodnight, Angel.”</p><p>Gunn got himself to the end of Level 3, then paused the game and went to sit next to Wesley on the couch. Quietly: “Now that was my fault. Really lost him there.”</p><p>Wesley shrugged and laid his book on the arm of the couch. “He might have known what the drawings were about. I was curious myself. I wouldn’t have asked but then you know I’ve probably been playing it so safe that he’s got bored. You asked because you were interested. That’s a good reason. I decided long ago that the only workable criterion for judging how I’d treated him was… ‘Did I act with his best interests at heart?’ ” A heavy sigh. “For what I’ve had to do in self-defence… Well -”</p><p>“Jeez! You don’t have to justify lockin’ him in his room. Scaldin’ him a couple of times. He’s a vampire and he’s crazy. Most guys’d chain him up and keep him like that.”</p><p>Wesley shook his head. “If it ever comes to that I’ll have to be sure I’m doing it for the right reasons. Because it’s the only way to keep us all safe. Not because I’m angry with him. Or… Or…” He swallowed. “It would be far too easy to do it for the wrong reasons.”</p><p>“Long as you do the chainin’ first. Pick over your reasons later.”</p><p>“Or work them out beforehand. I think we’ll have to chain him if we go to the drive-in. If he had one of the visions that make him violent… We couldn’t deal with Angelus in the confined space of the car unless he was already restrained.”</p><p>Gunn slumped heavily in the couch, let his head drop back, and stared at the ceiling. Going to the drive-in was supposed to be fun. A silly evening out. Would’ve been great to do with the crew if they could’ve afforded it. Imagine sitting in chains through some dumb movie, surrounded by kids in cars doing all their dumb teenage stuff. Imagine knowing this was the only way you could ever leave the apartment unless it was to train or fight.</p><p>Gunn dragged his hand over his face then rolled his head to look at Wesley. “I guess once I’ve had to deal with him when he’s violent I won’t feel so sorry for him. He’s just gettin’ what he deserves, right?”</p><p>“He’d be the first to agree with that, I’m sure.”</p><p>“OK.” Gunn sprang to his feet. “Need a beer. Then need to get past Level 10. You wanna beer, Wes?”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>“You haven’t taken your eyes off the screen in at least twenty minutes.” Gunn had been aware that Wesley had stopped reading, had been moving quietly around the room. In the process Wesley must have watched enough of the game to know when he should speak, since he’d chosen a gap between levels 22 and 23.</p><p>Gunn paused the game and turned, hooking his elbow over the back of the chair. “Have you never played one of these things?”</p><p>“Not since I was in school. A friend had a BBC, I think it was. There was one term we must have spent every spare hour playing adventure games. But in those days it was like reading a book. You’d type in ‘turn left’ and then on the screen it would say ‘You are standing in front of an archway with a rusted iron gate. Through the archway you can see…’ And so on. There weren’t any pictures. And you weren’t against the clock.”</p><p>“And then you grew out of it?”</p><p>“I think so. He made some new friends. Things changed. Games changed too, and what I saw of the shooting games didn’t appeal to me. There was nothing you could say about playing them except what score you’d got. You couldn’t discuss your decisions, couldn’t share anything. It wasn’t a discovery.”</p><p>“It gonna bug you that I like shoot-em-ups? Way more than this.” He nodded at the screen.</p><p>Wesley laughed and came forward to stand by the chair, his hand stroking Gunn’s shoulder. “I look forward to boasting about your scores to Angel.” Gunn reached up to take Wesley by the neck of his shirt, and brought him down so their lips touched.</p><p>Wesley was obviously in one of his slow and serious moods, from the amount of time he was insisting on spending just easing Gunn’s mouth open. In a girl, Gunn would have found such slow-motion foreplay creepy - a bad sign about what she expected sex to be like - but with Wesley it was exciting.</p><p>“You know…” A whisper against Gunn’s cheek. “Watching you play I was thinking, there must be a word for someone who’s trying to decide whether to interrupt a young man… a younger man… who’s in the middle of a computer game. For wondering how long you might have to wait before he’ll stop and you can ask him if he’s ready to take you to bed and fuck you.”</p><p>Gunn gasped, then lurched to his feet and dragged Wesley towards the bedroom. “Sure there’s a word. It’s ‘idiot’. Like there was anything to decide. Like I’d ever not be ready.”</p><p>Gunn had put his fingers in Wesley often enough by then that he knew the feelings that got him worried most that he was hurting Wesley, and he also knew he wouldn’t get an answer either way from asking Wesley. Wesley never really seemed to hear the question, would just grunt and shake his head, and push against Gunn, far harder than Gunn would have dared. Gunn wanted to take the head-shake as a simple no (“No, no, of course you’re not.”), but it wasn’t, it was raw impatience. But Wesley only got impatient with the question, not when Gunn went slow and careful, so Gunn did what he’d done before when it was just his fingers, and stroked and coaxed and opened Wesley as carefully as he knew how; then he pushed his cock in slowly, so slowly, using the width of his thumb and counted heartbeats to pace himself, fighting every second against the urge to slam in as deep as he could go, get his cock as much of this incredible feeling as he could.</p><p>Once he was all the way in he lay on top of Wesley like he was exhausted at the end of a race, finally giving up control over his breathing and letting himself pant and gasp against the crook of Wesley’s neck, and moan whenever Wesley clenched around him.</p><p>He thought, “Wesley, I love you. I love you,” then gathered himself and stretched forward to kiss Wesley’s shoulder. He moaned again at the taste of Wesley’s sweat and then when he felt Wesley’s pulse under his tongue. Wesley sighed, and lifted his head back to roll his cheek against the curve of Gunn’s skull; and Gunn felt the working of Wesley’s back muscles all the way down his body, nearly to his cock. He pushed forward to meet the movement and found himself rocking his hips against Wesley’s. He was still pressed in tight, but even so he could flex and twist and ride; and soon he was wondering if he was really feeling what he thought: that Wesley was changing around him, getting fitted to his shape, and fitted so well that anyone who went inside him from now on would know that there was just one cock that he wanted. Not really possible, not really, but didn’t you have to imagine something almost-impossible when you heard the change in Wesley’s voice? After all those slow, wondering moans and sighs… to bring him so quickly to such sharp, wild cries of total excitement.</p><p>Gunn didn’t want them to come yet, he wanted to learn how to fuck Wesley, a real, slippery, pumping fuck. He didn’t want to have to wait until the next time, even if that would be just this same night. He slowed then stilled, and lay on Wesley like he had before. Their bodies gradually became almost calm, Gunn’s more quickly than Wesley’s.</p><p>“You’re right, I’m an idiot. To think I waited so long, when I could have had this.”</p><p>Gunn laughed quietly, then said very quietly, “Wes? This is the best thing I’ve ever done.” In bed, Wes would think he meant. But Gunn could also believe, in that moment, that the two of them were doing something that the world needed, that they were taking their part in something secret and important.</p><p>“Oh, Charles.” Hushed. “Yes.”</p><p>Gunn kissed Wesley’s neck again and they murmured at one another for a while, falling silent whenever Wesley’s muscles tightened along the length of Gunn’s cock – trying to push him out, but instead making him want to stay forever - and afterwards they were more urgent each time, more direct, almost competing in telling each other how good this was feeling.</p><p>With each contraction, the throbbing in Gunn’s cock took longer to fade afterwards from insistent to just hungry. Soon there wouldn’t be anything except insistent. They couldn’t lie and murmur for much longer. One last open-mouthed kiss, almost a bite, and then he lifted himself off Wesley’s back. “Wesley. What sort of fuck do you want me to give you? What are you ready for?” Really: how hard can I take you and know I won’t hurt you? But he still didn’t trust Wesley to answer that question properly.</p><p>“I want you to make me feel it for a week.”</p><p>Gunn closed his eyes, bit his lip, and thought as hard as his body would let him. Finally: “OK, I’ll give you that on one condition…” He waited until Wesley grunted for him to continue. “You have to keep lettin’ me know what you like. And what you don’t like. You go quiet on me, I’ll think you’re lettin’ me do something I’ll regret.”</p><p>Breathless: “I won’t go quiet. I’ll let you know everything.”</p><p>Gunn only found one thing Wesley didn’t like: Gunn trying to make him come, when he wanted Gunn to be working only on the fucking. “Not now. Not now. Don’t need it like that. Too much. Wasted.” For what he liked he used even fewer words, but Gunn would have believed the pleasure in his voice even without any words.</p><p>Afterwards there was a long, long time where Gunn’s mind felt wiped clean, like it would never think again. He was still inside Wesley, though being pushed out fraction by fraction now that he was softening; and the idea that he couldn’t make himself stay seemed like the saddest thing in the world. Wesley was tense underneath him, heart pounding, and Wesley’s noises now were close to begging.</p><p>“Now?” Gunn shifted so that he could reach his hand around.</p><p>“Yes. Please.”</p><p>Wesley’s coming was quick and violent, punching the breath from Gunn’s chest, and also pushing Gunn’s cock the rest of the way out of Wesley’s body. Gunn sighed, slumped along with Wesley, and lay thinking about what they’d done, what it made him.</p><p>This was a different league. Fooling around with your best friend; once in a while - a long while - getting the mood to suck off the first guy you found who was close enough to the look of that best friend. Never looking for more, not usually even a name. That was kids’ stuff, almost. Safe. Close to home. This was a different league. The Gunn who’d led the crew never could have suspected that anyone - let alone himself - could be truly, tenderly in love with that part of another man’s body. Gunn see how it was going to be, how it would drive him near-crazy sometimes: so many hours in every day when he simply couldn’t be where he wanted.</p><p>“Charles, can you lift up? I want to turn over.”</p><p>The longest kiss in the world. They were both drenched with sweat, thighs, chests slicked together, hands sliding where they couldn’t grip.</p><p>“Is it always like that?” Gunn felt like his voice sounded different. Deeper. Or slower. Needing more room. But different somehow, and it would be saying new things.</p><p>“God, no.” A pause. “Like what, though? What aspect were you thinking of?”</p><p>What aspect? An “aspect” of fucking? Wesley cracked him up. “The aspect where when I said it was the best thing I’d ever done, I didn’t know the half of it then. Oh, Wes, could be you’ll wish you’d never got me started.”</p><p>“No, never. Never.”</p><p>Some time later Gunn said, “There’re other aspects?”</p><p>Wesley looked for a few seconds like he’d forgotten what they’d been talking about. Then: “Well, I’m not often in the mood to feel quite this sore afterwards. I feel a hundred and fifty percent fucked. Usually a hundred percent is enough.”</p><p>“C’n I ask how sore? Or you gonna just grunt at me again?”</p><p>“Throbbing beautifully. Very much awake. But hoping you’ll help cover for me in our next few training sessions.”</p><p>Gunn laughed. “Cover for you? Angel’s gonna get a surprise you’re walkin’ tomorrow, after what he must’ve heard.”</p><p>Wesley pulled a face. “I’m also hoping that this falls straight into one of the many chasms in his memory.”</p><p>“Yeah, and the next fifty times. You think he puts his pillow over his head? Or maybe his ear to the door.”</p><p>Firmly: “I do not think about that, at all. Perverse, Charles. As long as he says nothing, we do not ever need to think about that.”</p><p>Gunn couldn’t tell how much Wesley was joking, acting the uptight Brit while they both knew they got a charge from the idea of Angel. On the other hand, the idea of Angel trying to ask them about their sex life was way too much. Jeez, what would he say to Gunn now? “Wesley smells different. He’s sore. He’s thinking about what you did, nearly as much as you are.” Yeah, Wesley had a point, whether he was joking or not. Gunn raised himself up on his elbow, acting indignant. “Perverse? Comin’ from the guy who doesn’t like shoot-em-ups?”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Gunn was out for most of the day on Monday, getting his face and card known around El Segundo, Westwood and Fairfax, and going to Glendale to meet his second ex-client over the guy’s lunchbreak. He got back to the apartment a couple of hours after dark, just in time for the training session.</p><p>“How come you never mentioned Wes is a crack shot with the crossbow? Guy I met today said you took out a whole nest of those flying Xuaxi demons for him. Didn’t miss once. We gotta be workin’ that into our act.”</p><p>Wesley was shaking his head. “That was a very unusual situation. How many fights have you gone into, knowing that you’ll have that much warning before you need to change to a close-range weapon? If there might not be any warning, then you have to go into the fight with a sword. Or an axe. That has to be your choice.”</p><p>“What about if you’re good enough with the crossbow that you stop it ever getting to close range? Like you did with the Xuaxi.”</p><p>“It takes two hands to reload a crossbow. I think you’re asking a lot from my one shot. Against the Xuaxi we took all of our bows, ready-loaded. We knew we’d be able to lay them out ready, and my sword. That’s really not going to happen again.”</p><p>“Man, you both been takin’ this like there’s some tax on usin’ y’r imagination! What happens is we all go in with loaded bows - swords on our backs or whatever. Angel and I do the reload, keep you supplied. Ditch the bows if it’s goin’ to close-quarters. Plenty of time.”</p><p>Angel looked at Gunn, his expression unreadable. Wesley scratched his head for a few seconds, looking at some point on the floor, then, without enthusiasm: “Yes. It’s worth trying.”</p><p>“Angel? What do you think?” Angel just shrugged and nodded. “Then we’ll start workin’ on it tomorrow, yeah? Bring the bows. Have to start simple with the targets but we’ll soon figure out how to get Wes some real practice.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Wednesday afternoon, Gunn got a call on his cell phone from someone calling himself Merl. Slow, creepy voice - made Gunn think of a lizard.</p><p>“Yeahuh. Heard you were asking round. Got one of your cards. Think we could do business, the money’s right.”</p><p>“What kind of business?”</p><p>“I hear things, man. Like I heard you were asking round, what you were asking. I tell you for free, that Macuju ain’t in Fairfax anymore. Gone to New Mexico. Where in New Mexico, now that’d be on the meter. “</p><p>Gunn hadn’t used the term ‘Macuju’ when he’d been talking to the kids and the bums in Fairfax, although that demon had been Wesley’s prime suspect for the mounds of crushed rats. OK, this Merl could be useful. But he’d have to meet Gunn’s face-to-face test first. Gunn didn’t do business with someone who was only a voice on the phone, especially not that voice.</p><p>“Don’t need more than gone. Gone’s good. Buy you a drink, you tell me how you heard? We go on the meter, I wanna know what’s under the hood.”</p><p>A slight pause. “You know Caritas, right? Off La Brea near West 8th. Down the stairs. Tomorrow night, round nine.”</p><p>“How’ll I know you?”</p><p>“Don’t need to. You take a seat at the bar. I know you.”</p><p>“A Special on ‘mysterious’. You run that every Thursday?”</p><p>“Fine. Black leather jacket. ‘bout as much hair as you. Good enough?”</p><p>“Guess I’ll find out tomorrow, won’t I?”</p><p>Gunn was close to the address Merl had given, so he drove around straight away to check it out. The door was closed, but the colour of its paintwork, the design of the sign above, and the condition of both suggested that this was a dive bar that most guys would be happy to bring a date to. Safe enough neighbourhood, too. Be better to see it at night, see that the guys and their dates weren’t cannibal bikers or anything, but it really didn’t look like more trouble than he could get himself out of - and he knew his way around trouble.</p><p>Back home, Gunn learned that Angel had taken the online search for a drive-in into his own hands and had discovered that the nearest was about 15 miles east, in La Puente. Angel didn’t want to see any of the four movies that were showing that week, but he and Wesley had gone far enough in making plans that they’d discussed the need for chains. Angel had apparently accepted Wesley’s argument immediately and the two of them had moved straight on to details of design and materials. Gunn found himself chilled by the sight of Wesley’s neat technical drawings; he didn’t even want to touch them. White folks. This is how they do all the things they do. It put the next day’s meeting with Merl into perspective: a piece of routine; reassuring, even - a slice of ordinary.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Gunn took two or three seconds to believe what his eyes were telling him about Caritas, and then he turned reflex-quick to check his exit up the stairs. A set -up. It was a fucking set-up. Those couldn’t be people in there, they had to be vampires. He checked the exit: still clear. OK. He had time to check the layout. Figure the players. Maybe he’d come back with Wesley and Angel and just torch the place. Or maybe they’d need to shake it down first, find out if there was more.</p><p>He went a couple of steps inside, to the left of the door away from the vamp bouncer, keeping his back to the wall. Scanned the room, trying to print it in his mind like Angel would have with a vision, every detail to carry back to Wesley and all the while he was held like a bowstring, watching for the signal to be given and the trap to be sprung on him.</p><p>Minutes passed, and his mind started refusing to be impressed with the details of such a variety of demon forms; not because of overload, but because it was fixing more and more on the details that looked just like a regular karaoke bar, which had to be the most incredible part of the whole scene. This was either the cleverest set-up ever, or the craziest. They’d got it all exactly right, they’d got demons who could really look like they were doing this. Like it wasn’t about… Yeah, round of applause for the gutsy lady. “I will survive.” No argument, with those teeth.</p><p>A ripple ran through the audience and Gunn inched back towards the door - but no, they looked like they were just settling deeper in, like now torching the place would be the only way to get them to take their eyes off the stage and the three youngsters who’d just bounded onto it grinning like idiots. Well, the vamp looked young, barely out of high-school, and unless that tan was from a bottle, it must only be a few months since he’d had a pulse. For the gecko-looking thing and its chunky blue friend, Gunn could only make guesses around human liquor laws and the body-language that went with human adolescence.</p><p>Most of the audience recognised the song from the first notes, started laughing and applauding, but until the chorus Gunn only knew that he’d heard it before. Walk Like a Man. It was, yeah, it was. Holy shit. The moment when you know you’ve seen everything. And they were good. Tight. The gecko, in the middle, was right there with those is-that-a-girl high notes, and the vamp and the blue one had their movements perfectly synchronised, and perfectly judged between tribute and parody. But wouldn’t you have to practise that in front of a mirror?</p><p>Gunn didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile. Too weird, way, way too weird. He did raise his hands to applaud at the end, but then got caught in a loop of “Look at yourself, what the fuck you doing?” against “Showin’ I’m big enough to admit they earned it...” and by the time he emerged ready to applaud (but in a cool, seen-it-before way, like a talent scout), the ultra-smooth MC demon was bringing on the next act.</p><p>OK, so he didn’t know what this was. But it wasn’t about him. Not one of those vamps even cared there was a human in the room. Forget stakes and holy water: show ‘em karaoke and maybe they didn’t even want the blood, couldn’t even smell it. Who the hell knew this? Was there a word about it anywhere in all of Wesley’s books?</p><p>Not much chance of using the karaoke thing in a fight, but still a discovery that deserved a beer. Yeah, he’d take a seat at the bar (that one close to the door, clear line to the exit), and wait for bald, mysterious Merl.</p><p>Merl was a demon. Well, of course he was. But until he heard that voice and turned round, the thought that a demon had called his cell phone had just not entered Gunn’s head. He’d had this picture of a little old guy with sticking-out ears, ex-jockey, who now just smoked and watched too many old movies. Cheaper tastes than Gunn had expected, too: domestic beer, not something spent ten years in a barrel. Though Merl himself looked like he might’ve just crawled out of his own barrel and he didn’t like eye-contact (which suited Gunn fine).</p><p>As for the Macuju demon that Gunn had been asking about in Fairfax, Merl fed Gunn some disgusting story about the West Coast market in demon crap - really, the actual piles of shit - and this scooper he knew who’d been following the Macuju around for years, though New Mexico was just too far. Gunn didn’t care much if it was true or not. If the Macuju had left then none of this mattered, and Merl was entitled to keep his methods to himself; Gunn wouldn’t trust anyone who didn’t know when to lie. As long as Merl told enough of the truth when it mattered; and as long as he was just as deadpan and plausible if anyone ever asked him questions about Angel Investigations.</p><p>“What about a Prio Motu in town? You heard anything about that?”</p><p>“Oh, the Prio. You missed him, too, man.”</p><p>“Where’d he go?”</p><p>“Who knows? He was holed up by the Water and Power for a few days. I heard of ten or more went in after him, never came out. Stone killers, the Prios. Word was, he was on some kind of war mission to do with a prophecy.”</p><p>“Friends of yours after him?”</p><p>“Friends of nobody. You got prophecies, you always got vested interests, you get bounty-hunters. Way it works. Why you looking for the Prio, anyway?”</p><p>“You need to know that?” A mild challenge.</p><p>“No. Right. So we’re in business?”</p><p>“Could be. Tell me how to reach you, we’ll set the meter case-by-case. Got nothin’ for you right now.”</p><p>Merl nodded, didn’t try to set a minimum rate, so Gunn bought him another beer; he was taking his own beer slowly, in no hurry to leave.</p><p>“You know those three who were up earlier? Doing ‘Walk Like a Man’?”</p><p>“Oh, yeah. The Three Musketeers.” Without enthusiasm.</p><p>“They in here a lot?”</p><p>“Seems like it. Since about a year ago.”</p><p>“Were they always that tight? Or’d they treat this as their practice room?”</p><p>Slowly: “Well… None of them was anything special when they used to sing on their own. Then they were suddenly like ‘an act’. Must’ve taken some serious time out of their surfing.”</p><p>“They surf?” Where, for God’s sake? When must be well after dark.</p><p>A shrug. “Matt, anyway. Family’s got this beach house. Sounds like he lives there. And Piriti and Grouw, most weekends. Can’t see them getting out to the water, can you? Not during the day, anyway.”</p><p>Matt wasn’t a vampire? Unless Gunn was making all the wrong assumptions about which one was Matt, and why Piriti and Grouw couldn’t use the beach during the day. “His family’s OK with all this?”</p><p>“Wouldn’t be if they knew. Or maybe they would if they knew Piriti and Grouw are the only reason he goes to any of his classes. They’re more scared of him having to get a job than he is.”</p><p>Gunn laughed. “What about Piriti and Grouw? They got family in town? And which one’s which? Who was the one doin’ most of the singing?”</p><p>“That’s Piriti. Yeah, he’s got family in town. Very traditional. They think Piriti and his brother are out right now digging their cave… castle thing, fancy enough to make a really big female want to lay her eggs in it.” So Piriti was the gecko. Made sense. He looked the eggy type.</p><p>“Where’s his brother?” Gunn couldn’t see couldn’t see another gecko demon in the room.</p><p>“Sleeping? Hunting? Sometimes he digs. Some weekends they all dig. They like the digging and looking for the special rocks. Just don’t want the eggs.”</p><p>“And Grouw’s family?” The chunky blue demon. Kind of had the look of some big piece of furniture. A dresser, maybe. Been given a couple of coats of cheap paint and thrown down the stairs a few times.</p><p>“They don’t feature. Except he’s got a sister. Half-sister. Older. Works security in one of those, ah, correctional dimensions. Come here with them a couple of times. Didn’t sing. Family big with you?”</p><p>Gunn’s turn to shrug. “It’s a place to start. You see many vampires in here?”</p><p>“Some. Few groups come in - talk like they’re childe-packs. Always kind of rowdy, don’t fit in well. Or the odd lone bloodsucker passing through town, wants to see for himself. Like I said, they don’t fit in.”</p><p>In that case, there were no vampires in the bar, not one, just a lot of people who’d somehow decided they liked to hang out with demons. Though he shouldn’t say “just”, because that idea was actually much stranger than the idea about vampires and karaoke. The karaoke thing couldn’t really make any difference to anyone, but all these people knowing about demons, acting almost like they were friends with demons… That was serious. It was real. Not something you’d mark by going and ordering a beer. Something you’d have to go off and think about, maybe for days.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>At first Wesley thought that Caritas was Gunn’s idea of a joke, and the more Gunn tried to convince him with details, the more Wesley laughed and shook his head.</p><p>“A Chachaspe demon in the same room as a Hull demon? They’ve been fighting over territory, in at least three different dimensions, since they first worked out which way round to hold a pointed stick. Your Grouw, the big blue one, he’s a Hull demon. When he meets a Chachaspe demon like Piriti, all he sees is the makings of a hard-wearing set of gecko-skin boots and gauntlets.”</p><p>“What, so I picked a bunch of demons at random from your books? Looked around for the stupidest idea for stickin’ ‘em together? Wish I had that kind of time on my hands. And what d’you think I did tonight, if it wasn’t what I’m sayin’?”</p><p>Wesley didn’t reply immediately, looked slightly wary and very puzzled. “Well, I thought you must have met this Merl person in an ordinary karaoke bar, but…” Shaking his head slowly. “I don’t see how you could have seen what you thought you saw. It has to be something else.”</p><p>“Then come along tomorrow night and work it out for me. You tell me it’s a year-round Halloween party, then I’ll just guess that Merl’s really two little old guys stacked on top of each other. But hey, it’s a free country. Can’t argue with the fact that the little old guy on the top knew about Kamal.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>“This is astonishing.”</p><p>“Not rubber suits, then.”</p><p>“There has to be… I don’t know. How do you impose ‘A benevolent disposition, at least to the level of sainthood’ as a door policy?”</p><p>“Not too well, if I got in. Couldn’t be the karaoke? Acts like some sort of spell on them?”</p><p>“Well, it’s having the opposite effect on me. I don’t know. This is astonishing.”</p><p>“So how d’we figure it out? We do want to figure it out, don’t we?”</p><p>“I suppose we ask. But that might be the most dangerous thing to do. Maybe it all works on everyone already knowing the rules. What do they do to intruders?”</p><p>“Yeah, well, we’re the only ones gawpin’, far’s I can see.”</p><p>Clear alarm on Wesley’s face, and then he turned his back to the room, tilting his head like that would hide him even further. “You’re right. We need to blend in.”</p><p>Gunn laughed. “Maybe not tonight, Wes. You look like you’ll need a week to scrape all the gawp off your face. You know, we might get away without asking. They have to talk about the rules here sometimes. Like that couple on a date. If it was her first time here, she’d have to say something like ‘Oh, yeah, that must be one of those spray things you told me about. Where they pump out the sedative.’ ” He shrugged. “Hour or so, few times a week. Merl hears enough here, should work for me.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Gunn and Angel had been working slowly but steadily through the case files and were now back to about four months before Wesley arrived. On Saturday night, after training and dinner, they tackled the next three files from the stack while Wesley settled down with a book.</p><p>“Huh. Wolfram and Hart. Small world.” Gunn hadn’t looked at the files since he’d first made his list of questions.</p><p>“What’s that?”</p><p>Gunn pushed the file across the table to Angel. “There’s a note here at the end. A question. ‘Wolfram and Hart again?’ That’s a law firm that’s doin’ charity work for a friend of mine who runs a homeless shelter. Anne. Wes’s met her. D’you know what they had to do with this case?”</p><p>Angel stared at the sheet, frowning, then shook his head. “That’s Doyle’s writing. I can’t… Or is…? A law firm… No, I don’t know. Wes?”</p><p>Without looking up from his book: “I don’t know, either. You’ve never mentioned any law firm to me.”</p><p>Gunn was looking through all of the earlier files. “He said ‘again’. Maybe it’ll come back to you if we can find them in another case.” But there was no other reference. Gunn shrugged. “Well… it’s a large firm, from what Anne says. Must be large enough to make the world seem small.”</p><p>When they had finished with the three cases, Angel sat in his armchair and took up his own book, and Gunn plugged the headphones into the computer and threw himself into the middle of an interstellar war.</p><p>“Charles! Get the pad from the desk!”</p><p>Gunn tore the headphones off as he was launching himself out of his chair. How long had he been playing? As long as an hour? Behind him he heard a long, pleading cry of pain, then harsh panting that was broken almost immediately by another cry, shorter this time but raw, shocked, and then panting again, much harsher, like Angel’s throat was tearing itself apart.</p><p>“Oh, fuck. Fuck. Oh, fuck.” Wesley wasn’t surprised or panicking, more dismayed and resigned. “Not the pad. Get the net. And the pikes.” Wesley’s worst-case procedure for controlling Angel when a vision made him violent; when Gunn had insisted on a briefing the previous Sunday, he hadn’t imagined they’d be putting it into practice so soon.</p><p>The net was large, at least twelve feet across, weighted all around the edges with lead crucifixes. Gunn flung it over his shoulder and grabbed two seven-foot pikes from the weapons cabinet. He turned back to the centre of the room to see Angel, twisted sideways across the arm of the chair, go suddenly limp and then roll slowly out of the chair to fall heavily on the floor. Wesley had just started pushing the couch out of the way, towards the kitchen; they had to clear the area around Angel before they could use the net. Wesley had already moved the coffee table against the far wall, so Gunn put the pikes down and dealt with the armchair, hauling it right across the room and using it to block the path between the dining table and the window.</p><p>Gunn could hear that the next state was starting - the “reverberation phase”, Wesley had called it. Angel was muttering, the sounds becoming less like growls and more like words with each breath, and he was shifting against the floor, slow movements with the same rhythm as his voice. Gunn hadn’t seen Angel’s face since the vision had started, but he thought he would have known just from the tone in the voice that there was a creature in the room now that would take deep pleasure in killing him.</p><p>“Good. That’s good.” Wesley had finished pushing the couch out of the way and was coming over to Gunn, reaching out to Gunn’s shoulder for one of the double-sized crucifixes that marked the corners of the net. Gunn nodded, then took the crucifix for the other corner, and they quickly unfolded the net and draped it out. Keeping such a large net from getting caught or tangled took concentration, and while they were handling it Gunn saw Angel only in his peripheral vision, as the restless shape that had to be centred under the net.</p><p>By the time they had the net laid properly, Angel’s words had become clear enough that Wesley could understand them; Gunn could see the change in the direction of Wesley’s attention. “Fetch my pike for me? I need to listen.” Gunn nodded, but Wesley was already turning away, moving back along the edge of the net.</p><p>Wesley had said, describing this stage, “It’s as if he’s trying to press himself into the floor, especially his head and his hands.” He’d never heard of any other vampire doing anything like it, could only guess that it was a memory of being buried. From the description, Gunn had imagined some frantic scrabbling, a dog grubbing for a bone, imagined himself having to hide from Wesley his disgust at the sight of Angel writhing helplessly on the ground. Instead, Wesley should have said, “He looks like the king of the panthers, stretching himself after the best kill of the year.” Or: “He looks like the ground’s in love with him, like he knows it worships every inch of his body. Like they’re getting ready to fuck for days.”</p><p>Wesley had told Gunn that the vampire might get an erection and Gunn had imagined that as another part of the disgusting helplessness. But instead it made the vampire seem more powerful, more frightening. It wasn’t aware of the net, of the two humans standing over it. Even if its eyes had been open, Gunn knew that it wouldn’t have seen them. There was nothing in its world except a vision of someone in terror, and its own rich pleasure in that terror.</p><p>Gunn wanted to kill it. Or wanted to leap forward and drag Wesley away to safely. Wanted to do both, felt fierce and urgent for both. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Because someone was in danger, and the vampire held the only hope of rescue. Gunn had to let Wesley stay where he was, down on one knee listening, at the edge of the net but much too near. All he could do was lean in to place the pike on the floor by Wesley’s hand, then stand ready with his own weapon waiting for the next stage, determined above everything to keep Wesley safe.</p><p>“It’s our world. It’s everywhere. It’s a nectar. Drink. Hollywood and Wilcox. Close enough to… Drink. Needs you. She’s so scared!” On a growl like triumph, back arching off the floor. “So scared. And they’re just… They’re nothing, they don’t know the first… Imagine if that was… An alley. She’s screaming in an alley. Yes. Ah, yes. There’s always more. But they don’t know.” Laughter, quiet, admiring . “They don’t know she’s for the beast! And she’ll think… She’ll think she deserves the beast. Could do more with her but… Yes, it’s rich. Feel it. Hollywood and Wilcox. Singing. Close. In our world. Hollywood and Wilcox. Our world. You know.” The voice and movements had become slower and slower, like the vampire was falling asleep.</p><p>Without taking his eyes off the vampire’s face, Wesley took a grip on the pike and got to his feet. “Get ready, Charles. As soon as he’s standing, we drive him towards the room. Don’t think twice about injuring him. He’s got plenty of time to heal.”</p><p>The vampire was still for maybe five seconds, then it tensed like it was listening for something, opened its eyes, saw them both, and then in an instant was on its feet and launching itself, snarling, straight at Wesley. The net probably saved Wesley’s life. If the vampire had been able to keep that speed, if it had its hands free to seize Wesley… It was fired by raw appetite in those moments, would have ignored any injury, and Wesley would have been down. But the net slowed it down and got in its way and distracted it, and when Gunn and Wesley moved in with the pikes, it felt the stab-wounds enough to want to avoid them. It backed away, snarling more fiercely than ever, trying to get out of the net but just stumbling on it, getting more tangled, confused, and angry. After they got it shut away it set up a howl of outrage and threw itself against the door over and over. They could hear the howling even out in the street.</p><p>They couldn’t find any sign of any frightened woman in any alley near Hollywood and Wilcox. There was one alley they couldn’t check properly, but that couldn’t be the alley for the woman, not with all the cops and with the tape and the crowd. Unless… Was she screaming because of those two poor bastards still pasted to the wall behind the dumpster? Had a demon done that? (And if not a demon, then what the hell else?) Were those two supposed to kill the demon, but they’d failed and now it would be after her? In this alley, after the bodies and cops and crowds had gone? Or somewhere near? The vampire had seen her screaming, had said Hollywood and Wilcox. Wesley said the vampire couldn’t lie, not in that stage. So they must be in the right place, just a couple of hours early.</p><p>Or a couple of hours late. Why was “she” more important than those two crushed by the dumpster? Why weren’t they worth a vision? Wesley didn’t know, except he’d never thought the powers could see everything. Maybe they didn’t know the men might fail. “If you think about the timing, Angel probably got the vision exactly at the time the men were killed. They didn’t know until then that she needed help.”</p><p>They moved the truck to where they’d be able to see when the alley was clear again, then did another search on foot of all of the other alleys, this time looking for any sign of a demon’s tracks, any hole where it might be living. There was nothing, so they went back to the truck to drink coffee and wait.</p><p>“Wes, how the hell d’you ever get through one of these on your own? I know you told me he was one of the worst, but he was enjoying it so much, every part of him. It was… And how can you see that and then worry about anything in how you treat him? I –” Shaking his head, over and over. “No, not ‘him’. It’s a thing. Even thinkin’ of it with a name, I’m not gonna give it even that much. It should spend every second it knows who you are down on its knees, every fucking second trying to understand why you don’t kill it!”</p><p>Wesley sighed and dragged his hand over his forehead. “You’ll probably see some of that tomorrow. And you’ll probably get bored with it just as quickly as I do.”</p><p>“But how? How did you control that thing on your own?”</p><p>“It’s much easier if he’s in his room when the vision hits. The first time it happened we were still in the old building. There wasn’t a lock on his door, even if I’d thought of that. I had no idea what he was likely to do.”</p><p>“So wha’d’you do?”</p><p>“I ran out of the building before I even found out that he speaks when he’s on the floor. Spent the night in a hotel, praying that he’d have changed back by the morning. I think he must have changed back in just a few hours. The damage to him from the visions was so slight in those days, we had no idea. And he’d spent most of the night, after he’d changed back, convinced that Angelus must have killed me and dumped the body in the sewers. So we made him a room we could lock. And it wasn’t until he’d had another three visions - normal visions - that I could persuade him to come out of his room and give me some more training.” A shrug. “There are many reasons why he usually spends most of his time in his room.”</p><p>“And it’ll be gone by morning?”</p><p>“I think so.”</p><p>“How d’you tell, then? I’m not lettin’ you open the door on that thing.”</p><p>“I talk to him. There probably was a time when Angelus could have pretended to be Angel, but not any more. They’re both too fractured now.”</p><p>After another round of the alleys, over a second coffee as bad as the first, Gunn said, “I want us to chain him up. I don’t wanna go through that again.” Saying “him” as a way of meeting Wesley partway. An inch, maybe, compared with the mile he was asking from Wesley, but it was he could spare.</p><p>“What do you mean, chain him up? You can’t mean all the time. Charles, this was so far from being representative.”</p><p>“And how ‘representative’ was the time when he got to hit you? The last time I heard him tryin’ to break through that door.” Just a month ago, almost exactly. “He only has to get through once. Have us make one mistake. We should keep him in chains. Chain him to the floor or into his bed and gag him when we have to leave him like this - or find some way to live with knowing that we killed the poor bastard who’ll one day go in to try to shut him up.” Gunn kept talking even as he watched Wesley turn his face hard away, as he watched Wesley flinching. He knew he was right. And it was for Wesley’s sake more than anything else that he was right.</p><p>A long silence and then Wesley turned his head back slightly, not enough for Gunn to see his expression. Very quietly, to the floor of the truck: “Not all the time. Please. I couldn’t live like that. It would turn me into… I couldn’t live like that.”</p><p>Just as quietly, not a challenge: “How could you live?”</p><p>Wesley sighed, then turned his whole body towards Gunn. “When he’s on the floor. Before the net or instead of the net. We’d have time. We could get the gag in place around his neck, then fit it once we’d got him fixed to the bed-frame. After that phase was over and he’d stopped talking.”</p><p>Gunn nodded, relieved and grateful. “It’ll be easier, Wes, on all of us. Might not even need to use the pikes any more.”</p><p>“No. Maybe. But we were -” Another sigh. “I’ll tell him tomorrow. I have to explain to him before we start getting any of the equipment.”</p><p>Gunn knew that Wesley didn’t need to be reassured about Angel’s reaction - Angel would agree instantly, like he had about the drive-in. Wesley wanted to tell Angel because he needed to know he was being fair to his vampire. Gunn should probably be thinking now that Wesley was a fool. Fooling himself, in the worst way. Instead Gunn was thinking that he admired Wesley more than ever: for his self-control, how he insisted through everything that he would stay the person he wanted to be, how he tested every idea against that. Gunn didn’t understand why it was so important to Wesley, but then he didn’t need to understand. Being in love with Wesley was so much about being in love with all that was different about Wesley.</p><p>The cops left around two a.m., and after three it felt like they were the only people within four blocks who were awake, especially if you made that awake and sober. They gave up at seven when the groups of clubbers started to emerge, blinking, into the new light of a Sunday morning; and Gunn easily persuaded Wesley to take in breakfast on the way home, a proper breakfast with a view of the ocean. They were both too tired to worry much about the vision. Maybe the powers had got it wrong all along, and “she” had saved herself by just deciding to walk a different route. There probably was a demon in the area, but there had to be a smarter way of dealing with it than another eight hours of stake-out.</p><p>The apartment was quiet. No sound at all from the vampire’s room.</p><p>“You don’t have to do this now.” Gunn put his hand on Wesley’s arm – just barely touching, when what he wanted to do was force himself between Wesley and the locked door. “He can’t’ve had less sleep than you. I were you, I’d say he can wait.”</p><p>Wesley shook his head and raised his hand ready to knock on the door. “If he’s heard that we’re back and then we don’t let him out, then he’ll think the worst about what Angelus must have done. It’s less work just to get it over with.” He knocked three times, quietly: one roommate checking on another. “Angel? Are you awake? Should I come in?”</p><p>A sound like something taken by surprise, then, uncertain: “Wesley?”</p><p>“We’re back, Angel. Should I come in? Do you need anything?”</p><p>Slowly: “Wesley, I - Can you tell me? I - I don’t know what he did.”</p><p>Wesley nodded to Gunn. “He’s changed back.” He reached for the key and put it in the lock. “Come in if you like but let me deal with him. At least until we see how he’s reacting to you.”</p><p>Angel was on the other side of the room, must have been huddled in the corner between the wall and the far side of the bed; Gunn had heard him scramble to his feet when Wesley opened the door. He looked a wreck, hair matted with sweat, chest and stomach streaked with blood. He was wearing the same cut and bloody shirt, now hanging open - maybe torn open. Trousers torn open too, enough for Gunn to see a triangle of white, to see that Angel wore briefs, the same as Wesley. Semen as well as blood was smeared on the cold skin, Gunn would bet his life.</p><p>Wesley had walked straight over the heaped net, showed no hesitation about approaching Angel. Gunn kicked the net out of the way while keeping his eyes on the vampire, and then stood ready just inside the door.</p><p>“Wesley, you -” Angel raised his hand, looked like he wanted to step forward. “He didn’t hurt you. He didn’t? Your friend -” Angel swallowed, gave a jerk of the head in Gunn’s direction, definitely not looking at Gunn. “He didn’t hurt your friend?”</p><p>“No, Angel, he didn’t hurt us. We were ready for him.” And at that Angel fell back against the wall, then slid down it, slumped so low in his corner that Gunn could only see the top of his bent head. Wesley knelt down next to Angel and leant forward briefly to touch his shoulder and Gunn had to force himself to stay by the door and let it happen. How could Wesley even want to be near him in that state? Wesley shouldn’t want to, he shouldn’t. Part of Gunn – a large part – was thinking of Angel as “it” now, wanting to take his name away. It was dangerous, it was just too dangerous, to let yourself think of that thing as a person. But he’d fall back into that habit, he could see it, the first time Angel made a joke with Wesley.</p><p>“What did he do?” Angel had raised his head, was searching Wesley’s face. Wesley sat back, propped his elbow on the bed, and calmly told Angel how the vision had arrived, what the vampire had said, and how he and Gunn had spent the night. Angel knew nothing at all about the vision, was asking Wesley what the demon had looked like in the vision, if the dumpster had appeared in it; and he couldn’t accept that Wesley didn’t know what had pushed the dumpster, or that there’d been no rescue, no sign even of who the vision wanted them to rescue.</p><p>Wesley soon gave up trying to tell Angel about the theories he and Gunn had formed during the night. “We’ll take you there, tonight, if you like. So you can see for yourself what happened.” Wesley stood up. “Charles and I are going to get a few hours sleep. We’ll be finished with the bathroom in a few minutes if you want to have a shower. Just throw that shirt away.”</p><p>They didn’t take Angel to the alley that night, because Angel wasn’t in a state to be taken to the alley, not even when he’d had a whole day to recover. He did manage to shower himself, they heard him when they were getting ready to sleep, but very early in the process of dressing himself he lost track of what he was doing, and for the rest of the day he was far out of reach. When Wesley went in to check on Angel early in the afternoon, he found Angel wearing only a coat, but with all his clothes emptied out of the wardrobe and drawers onto the bed. Angel was picking through the clothes, Wesley said, not like he was looking for something, but like he was sorting them into groups. It was hard to tell if he knew Wesley; he didn’t seem puzzled to see Wesley in his room, but his responses to Wesley’s questions were so off-track he might have been seeing and hearing Wesley as someone else entirely.</p><p>Later in the afternoon he began talking to himself, always quietly and never for long at a time, but Wesley and Gunn both got very distracted by waiting to see what tone his voice would have next; mostly the tone was anxious, even openly frightened, but sometimes it was cool, sometimes casual, and sometimes affectionate.</p><p>They talked for a while of going back to the alley without Angel, not wanting another stake-out but needing to do something, since the Powers weren’t going to help them out with any kind of follow-up vision. Damn, but that would be useful: “Yeah, you definitely missed it. And so you know for the future: we’re never gonna give you more than twelve hours’ warning.” So they’d nearly resigned themselves to at least four hours of stake-out when Gunn got the idea of looking online for clues about the Hollywood-and-Wilcox demon, and found very quickly that the two bodies behind the dumpster were not so much “poor bastards”, more “career criminals” (and not dainty white-collar crime, neither). Put a big question mark against the theory that those two were any part of keeping “her” safe and put a casting-call out for some new theories.</p><p>Death by dumpster. It still sounded like a demon’s work. Maybe it was another situation like the Prio Motu, where the demon was protecting her and Gunn and Wesley were supposed to help. But when? And where? Be a lot simpler if Angel could draw them a picture of what she had been scared of. If his drawing matched up with the mug-shots for those two behind the dumpster, then that would mean that the demon had saved her, that it was over. But in that case, the vision had been sent at least an hour too late. Could that be the reason it had brought out the vampire - because it was a totally fucked-up vision, in every sense? God knows. There were no other reports of any strange, demon-shaped incidents in that area, either good or bad</p><p>“What’s your gut feel, Wes?”</p><p>“That it was last night, whatever it was.”</p><p>“Yeah, me too. We sure enough of that, though, to be able to sleep soundly tonight?”</p><p>A long silence, then: “I can’t decide that now. Things look different in the day. I’ll have to find out how I feel when it’s night.”</p><p>Half an hour later Wesley had decided one thing about how he felt: that he wanted to cook a stroganoff for dinner. He went out to get the groceries he needed, and on his way did yet another round of the Hollywood-and-Wilcox alleys to see if any part of the puzzle became clearer in daylight. It didn’t.</p><p>After they had eaten and done the dishes, Wesley checked whether Angel was awake, then heated a beaker of blood and took it in to him. Gunn heard Wesley urging Angel to drink, then urging him to get dressed, even choosing a set of clothes for him and getting him started with putting them on. Angel said nothing that Gunn heard, didn’t even thank Wesley for the blood. When Wesley came out of the room, he stood for several seconds with his hand on the door-handle, clearly thinking, then turned the key in the lock.</p><p>“Is he in another stage, or something? He’s not about to turn back?”</p><p>Wesley shook his head. “He’s so dazed, I think there’s a risk he might wander out into the street while we’re gone.” A sigh. “I’m sorry, Charles. It’s going to be another long night. I have to be sure.”</p><p>“I know.” Wesley sounded like he’d only just made his decision, but Gunn had seen it coming over the last three hours: Wesley had got more and more restless, the cooking the only thing that seemed able to hold his concentration. Of course they had to be sure, even if their gut feeling was the same as before. What type of men would decide that the chance to save someone’s life wasn’t worth a few hours of lost sleep?</p><p>At 2 a.m., after a jaw-cracking yawn, Gunn said, “Wes. If we’re gonna do this tomorrow, too, we’re gonna have to sleep all day. And what if Angel gets another vision? We could do this for a week and still never know. Maybe in that time, if we’d just kept on with our normal work, we coulda saved someone else.”</p><p>A long, long silence. “And if we read in the news tomorrow that it happened half an hour after we went home?”</p><p>Gunn said slowly, “Have you ever had a vision go wrong before? You and Angel?” Wesley nodded and closed his eyes hard. “How d’you deal with it? You ‘n’ him?”</p><p>Wesley opened his eyes. “Mostly we didn’t talk to each other until the next vision.”</p><p>“You blamed each other?”</p><p>“I didn’t blame him.”</p><p>Gunn frowned. “He blamed you?”</p><p>“Well, he must have.”</p><p>Never again. Or Angel would have Gunn to answer to. “How much would you blame me if I pulled the truck out and took us home right now? What would that do to us? To you and me?”</p><p>Wesley looked startled, and turned to stare at Gunn. “How would you feel, then, when you read about ‘her’ in the news?” He truly wanted to know.</p><p>“Terrible, but… I’ve had members of my crew die and sometimes I knew that if I’d made a different decision then maybe, probably, they’d still be alive. But all you can do is make the best decision with what you know at the time. And if you don’t know anythin’ and you still got to make a decision, then you tell yourself that life’s a bitch and you toss a coin.” As simple as that. Wesley didn’t need to know how many times, over how many years, Gunn had felt close to drowning in rage and guilt and despair before he let himself accept that he would never be able to turn himself into the person who always knew the best thing to do, that he would have to keep on putting his people in the hands of stupid, brutal luck. “I think that’s where we are now. ‘cept I don’t wanna toss a coin. Giving this up’s a terrible thing to have to do, but you know we’d have to find a reason to give it up, sooner or later. And I’m sure enough now that it’s more important for us to get back to our lives. If…” He sighed. “If it goes wrong, we’ll get each other through it. Won’t we?”</p><p>After a lot of frowning, Wesley said, looking straight forward, out into the street, “I wonder how many arguments you’ll win with me next weekend. I’m going to get nervous of even getting in the truck with you.”</p><p>Gunn wanted to reach over and touch Wesley’s hand, hold it if Wesley would let him. But Wesley’s hand was on the seat by his right thigh, and reaching across Wesley’s body for it wouldn’t be the same thing at all. Instead, he put his hand on Wesley’s back, over his left shoulder-blade. “We’ll get each other through it. We’ll get each other through anything.”</p><p>Angel was asleep when they got back, stretched out on the floor beside his bed. He was looking almost like the vampire had looked just before it had leapt to its feet, tried to throw itself at Wesley. Wesley wanted to put the clothes away, thought it might help Angel get back to normal if the room was back in order when he woke up. They couldn’t get to the wardrobe, though, with Angel lying in front of it, so they laid the clothes neatly over the chair instead, and Wesley set out another change of clothes at the foot of the bed.</p><p>They were both far too tired for sex, and even if they hadn’t been, Gunn thought that the argument and the decision might have made the situation difficult. They weren’t angry with one another, but they were too serious, much too guilty to be able to look for pleasure for themselves. They needed to hold one another, though, and were pressed tight when they fell asleep, and also when they woke up.</p><p>“Will you tell Angel about the chains today? If he’s well enough. How we’re gonna start usin’ them.”</p><p>“As soon as I can. I’ll call you when I’ve done it. We can decide then exactly what equipment we need.”</p><p>Gunn nodded. “I thought I might go back to that bar this evening, after training. For about an hour.”</p><p>Quietly: “Be careful.”</p><p>“You’re the reckless one, English.” Gunn was smiling. “And then when I come back, I was hoping you’d fuck me. If you think I’m ready.”</p><p>The effect on Wesley’s breathing was instant. “I think by now there’s only one way to find out.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Angel was waiting for them in the living-room when they came out of the bedroom. He was sitting at the desk looking at the files, dressed in the clothes Wesley had laid out on the bed.</p><p>“Who took my clothes out? Are we moving somewhere? Do we need a different apartment now?”</p><p>The last thing Angel seemed to remember was Gunn playing at the computer on Saturday night. Wesley had to tell him all about the vision again, but this time Angel was able to discuss it on the same level as Wesley and Gunn. He agreed with what they’d decided: said he’d be interested to see the area, but thought they should all trust that the visions were as urgent as they felt; if a vision expected them to wait for a week, then wouldn’t it have to be a different type of vision, totally different? Angel was worried about them having to deal with Angelus, but in a practical way, not cringing and ashamed like he’d been when he was still wearing that ruined shirt.</p><p>“We - Charles has a better idea for how we can handle Angelus. With the two of us, we can control him properly.” And Wesley explained about the chains and the gag.</p><p>“A gag? But you shouldn’t need that. The chains should mean that he’d never get close enough to be able to bite you.”</p><p>“It’s not because of the teeth. It’s because of the noise he makes. He can snarl and howl for hours. When the neighbours complain about it I have to tell them I’m looking after a friend’s dog.”</p><p>Angel looked surprised and offended. “You’ve never told me that.”</p><p>“There was nothing I could do about it on my own. Especially not since we have to let him speak.” Wesley’s tone changed, became very quiet. “Have you been gagged before?” Angel nodded, frowning. “It’s worse than being chained?”</p><p>A long, sombre pause, then Angel shrugged. “Don’t ask me, ask any of the people Angelus gagged. Have you worked out how you’re going to do it? The chains, too.”</p><p>“Not yet. We thought you might have some ideas. Maybe we could adapt the designs for the drive-in.”</p><p>Between the three of them, they produced a first design over breakfast. Gunn bought the equipment during the day, and then they tested it out in the evening’s training. Angel refused to try to behave like Angelus did during the reverberation phase, just lay still on the floor during the two minutes Wesley had set. The beginning of the attack stage felt to Gunn like any other training bout, and he was taken completely by surprise when Angel turned into the vampire, which happened when they’d covered about half the distance to the rail they were using to stand in for the bed-frame. The vampire wasn’t as savage as before, was almost quiet; but it still fought them like they were the animals, like they couldn’t win because they were just food, and this time Gunn could feel it thinking about what it was going to do to them, how it would teach them. Wesley had to burn it to get it to open its mouth for the gag, and it still struggled so hard against them that Gunn nearly lost his grip on the buckle. The last minute showed them that the gag really did work; the sounds from that throat were still ugly, still promising a terrible death, but it couldn’t make them loud enough to bring the neighbours.</p><p>“Wes, do we – The training’s over, right? Do we try to get it down to the truck, take it home? Or do we keep it here till it turns back?” The vampire had become completely still, was hanging against the rail with its eyes closed.</p><p>“I think we -” Wesley broke off because Angel was back. In all his years of facing vampires Gunn had never seen that before: the demon giving way to the human. Why should that be so disturbing? Why didn’t he just feel relieved?</p><p>Angel was staring at Wesley, jerking his head and tugging against the chains – not hard, like he was reminding, not complaining - and Wesley took the hint straight away. Wesley removed the gag first, but Angel didn’t speak till he was completely free, and he couldn’t speak in his normal way because his mouth was bruised.</p><p>“I think we need a line around the throat. You need a better way of getting him moving. And we have to find locks that are easier for Wesley to close.” Wesley got out the drawings, they produced a second design and then they put in an hour on their sword-work, like they were a normal team, a crew of three friends.</p><p>They went home to clean up after training and then they all headed out again. Wesley took Angel in the convertible to look at alleys, and Gunn drove his truck to Caritas. Gunn had hardly thought about Caritas all day, hadn’t made any plans. Now he would have to set himself up for an hour of undercover in a bar, in one of the few times when he wanted to be completely alone. Left to himself he would have driven out somewhere and spent an hour thinking about their fight with Angel, about the bruises he’d left around Angel’s mouth. He could still feel that fight in every muscle.</p><p>When he’d killed the vampire that had used to be Alonna, he hadn’t felt rage, just sadness, like this was something he’d done a hundred times before. If he’d had dreams about having to do that to Alonna he couldn’t remember them, but they all knew, in the crew, that any one of them could be turned, and they all knew that the only thing to do with the vampire was kill it. Dealing with Angel as a vampire, he had felt rage: he wouldn’t show a scrap of mercy, he’d make the vampire suffer. And then a night or a minute later, he wasn’t dealing with Angel as a vampire any more, but with Angel as whatever he was. Not human but maybe a person. Sometimes a person. A person he almost liked. A person he could see was brave, keeping to a hard, hard duty. The person who’d saved Wesley, been there for Wesley in the hospital, brought Wesley home. Wesley didn’t hate the vampire, or not like this, not with this rage. Wesley wouldn’t have left bruises. Or, he’d know he’d left them for all the right reasons, because there was no other way.</p><p>But he was thinking like Wesley had been born perfect, like he’d known from the start how to keep the two of them separate in his mind. Angel one thing, and the vampire – (Angelus. Try it. Past time to try it.) – and Angelus as something else. Was selling Wesley short to think that’d come easy to him. He’d worked at it, he must’ve worked at it, like he’d worked at learning to fight. So this was Gunn working on it. This was how it started with him.</p><p>Caritas was quieter than he’d seen it before. He got a beer and sat at a table by the bar; and tried to look like a karaoke fan when he was still thinking so hard about Angel and Wesley and bruises that he could hardly tell one song from another. He’d stay for the full hour, anyway, though he wasn’t in a good state to notice much of anything; didn’t matter, when he could always come back another night.</p><p>After he’d been in the bar about twenty minutes, a human came up to the table and asked if any of the other seats were free. Gunn waved his hand to say “go ahead”, only looking away from the stage long enough to see if the guy asking was human or demon. When the next song started, Gunn turned his head to watch the MC leading the previous singer off to the side for one of those short, serious conversations. He watched for a couple of seconds, then as he was turning back to the stage he noticed that the other guy at the table had also been watching the MC, must have watched just a second longer than Gunn. That made Gunn look closer at the guy, and it turned out that the guy was Matt, the human from the Three Musketeers. Gunn checked the room for the other two, but Matt was on his own, at least for now.</p><p>Matt wasn’t paying any attention to the current song, but was looking through a thick stack of paper, and rolling a pen around and around the middle finger of his right hand. Gunn guessed he was choosing a song, and this must mean the others weren’t gonna be joining him. If it was gonna be the three of them, wouldn’t they do the choosing together or even have chosen something before they arrived?</p><p>Gunn leaned forward. “You sing sometimes with a Chachaspe demon and a Hull demon, don’t you? I saw you doin’ ‘Walk Like a Man’ last week. Was quite an act.”</p><p>“Oh. Hey. Thanks.” Casual, almost automatic. That was probably because he’d been concentrating on the list of songs, because in the next second he looked properly at Gunn and said, “I haven’t seen you sing, have I? Are you new here, or you just don’t sing?”</p><p>“Both. Just found this place last Thursday.”</p><p>A nod and a smile. “So you come back for the beer, the sounds, or the sights?” He gestured with his head around the room.</p><p>Gunn shrugged. “Well, the sights, mostly.” A slight pause and he pulled a face. “Sorry. I just diss half your friends?”</p><p>“Kinda, but you get to do that your first few visits. Normally five, or six if you’re willing to try ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ on your own. So how d’you find us?”</p><p>“Guy gave this address to meet him. Never showed. Practical joke, I guess.”</p><p>“Girlfriend brought me, year or so ago. And someone had brought her, and so on. Word doesn’t seem to spread that far, though.”</p><p>“What she tell you? About where you were goin’? Were you freaked?”</p><p>“Oh, she said demons and karaoke. And the psychic host, and everything. I thought she was joking. Still thought it was a joke for the first hour. Some all-year Halloween thing. Then I went to the men’s room and…” He shook his head. “No way those were costumes. Then I was freaked. But I was freaked enough to get up and sing with Carla and…” A shrug. “They were a good crowd.”</p><p>“Yeah, I got that too.”</p><p>“Hey, d’you mind if I - It’s Matt, by the way.”</p><p>“Gunn. With two ens.”</p><p>“Hi. D’you mind if I get back to this?” He pointed at the list of songs. “I don’t get my sheet in soon, I could be here all night.”</p><p>“Sure.”</p><p>Over the next few minutes Gunn half-watched Matt as he scanned the pages, stopping a few times to make a note on a small sheet of paper. Then he flipped the book closed, studied his sheet of paper while twirling his pen at double-speed, flipped the book open again, turned the sheet over and filled it in, and took the book and sheet to the bar.</p><p>“What you goin’ for?”</p><p>“ ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’. The Beatles. You know, ‘I don’t care too much for money.’ S’what I need a readin’ on. I’m doin’ this accountancy course and yeah I can see it makes sense, but would I be better doing something I liked? You doing something you like?” Really wanting to know.</p><p>“Yeah. Haven’t made any money from it yet, though.”</p><p>“Wha’d’you do?” Gunn gave Matt one of his cards; he’d been thinking this move over while Matt had been busy choosing a song. Matt read the card then did a double-take. “Oh, wow! Seriously, man? This isn’t just your joke on this place? Good joke, anyway.”</p><p>“Seriously.”</p><p>“So that’s how you knew Piriti’s a Chachaspe and Grouw’s a Hull. Was gonna ask.”</p><p>“Well, I didn’t know, but my partner did when I described them to him. Now, he really did think I was joking. Said they shouldn’t be friends.”</p><p>“God, no, they should hate each other. Or despise each other, maybe. It was months before they’d take the risk of meeting away from here. Didn’t know what they’d do to each other away from the spell. Made me stand between them with stun guns.” He shuddered. “That was seriously weird. Things they should warn you about when you start making friends with demons.”</p><p>“But they were OK?”</p><p>“Yeah. They’re friends. That seems to be more important than… But without the spell here, Piriti wouldn’t ever have let Grouw get close enough to talk.”</p><p>“D’you know exactly what type of spell it is?”</p><p>A shrug. “Not exactly. Some kind of anti-violence thing. Works on all types of demons. Maybe there’s hundreds of ‘em. I dunno. That the sort of thing you deal in?” He tapped Gunn’s business card.</p><p>“Not so far. Mostly it’s been humans who’ve been having problems with demons. But there’s gotta be at least as many demons havin’ problems with humans. Or with other demons.”</p><p>“At least.” He laughed. “Hey, if you could get Kersa off Marianne Faithful and back onto Doris Day, you’d earn a hundred bucks, easy, from every demon here.”</p><p>“Is that Kersa up now?” Gunn hadn’t been listening to the host’s introduction.</p><p>“No, that’s Illis. Kersa’s over there, by the stage. You can see the spines on her head, got a line of silver through them.”</p><p>They settled to listening, and the few times they did talk, it was only about the songs and the singers. Gunn enjoyed himself, while swearing he would never, ever get up on that stage; yeah, he was an extrovert, but not that kind of extrovert. After a while the host took a turn (a special request, he said), with a song that Gunn was sure he hadn’t heard before, all romantic and yearning. “You go to my head. And you linger like a haunting refrain. And I find you spinning round in my brain. Like the bubbles in a glass of champagne.”</p><p>It was about him, about all the stages of him falling in love with Wesley. And exactly, totally, about how he’d felt that first morning after, sitting in the diner looking out of the window. Feeling like his whole body was glowing with how good they were together, knowing they could be sweet together, and fierce, and everything in between. And they were. They were.</p><p>No, it wasn’t about them. Not really, not when you heard the rest of the words. It was too one-sided, and too romantic, too fizzy and carefree. “Get a hold of yourself, can’t you see that it never can be?” No, he’d been luckier than that, he’d known he was important to Wesley, right from the moment he had realised what he wanted. “This heart of mine hasn’t a ghost of a chance, in this crazy romance.” Made it sound like it was just a game, just fun. Not something that would change your whole life inside a week. Make you understand for the first time how a man could want to be fucked.</p><p>Not about them, but closer than anything else he knew, and the mood - if you took the words as just sound, put in your own meaning - the mood was everything he felt when he looked and looked and looked at Wesley’s face. He needed to be with Wesley now. They might not have the sex they’d planned for tonight. Angel might have found something in the alleys, and they’d all be spending the night working. Or Wesley might be angry about Gunn giving Angel bruises from the gagging, or just too shaken by that whole fight - like Gunn had been before Caritas had wound him down. Didn’t matter. He had to be where Wesley was. He shouldn’t be here now.</p><p>The song was finished. He’d applauded, hadn’t he? He hoped so. He checked his watch, saw he’d been in the bar nearly an hour. Wesley should be home. Unless Angel really had found something and they’d gone straight in, without him. No. No, Wesley would have called.</p><p>He drained his beer, then turned to Matt. “I have to get home. Sorry. Hoped I’d catch your turn, but I have to get back.”</p><p>“No problem. Y’won’t be missing anything. You’ll be coming back, yeah?”</p><p>“Oh, yeah.”</p><p>Wesley was home, on his own in the living-room, stretched out on his back on the couch and listening to classical music, really listening to it, no book anywhere near him. He started to get up but Gunn told him to stay put.</p><p>“I’m guessing he didn’t find anything.” Gunn was kneeling beside the couch, with his forearm pressed against the warmth of Wesley’s left side, and with Wesley’s fingers resting lightly on the inside of his wrist. Wesley’s erection looked to be in about the same state as Gunn’s: on a good simmer, no idea yet of getting urgent.</p><p>Wesley shook his head slowly. “Nothing at all that said demon. A few drops of blood from the alley with the dumpster, that he said didn’t come from either of the two. But just a few and he couldn’t tell how long they’d been there.” A shrug. “There’s nothing for us to do.”</p><p>“Is he OK about what we did in training? Are you?”</p><p>“Well, no one would be happy about it. But he’s not angry with us. It’s easy enough to tell when he’s angry. I think we’re over the worst. What about you? I was - Of course, I know you’d be careful.”</p><p>Gunn had thought at first that Wesley was asking about the fight, then realised he meant Caritas. “Didn’t really need to be.” Gunn told Wesley the little that he’d learned about the spell, and mentioned that he’d given his card to Matt. “You don’t have a problem with that, do you? Idea of us doin’ work for demons.”</p><p>“Not in principle. I’d be surprised if any demon would really consider us, though, given what we’ve been doing so far. And I’d want to take the address off the cards.” A brief laugh and then he smiled up at Gunn. “You know I’d never go looking for work if left to myself. Not until I’d been out of translation work for maybe a month. It’s an amazing idea. You’re full of amazing ideas.” Suddenly very serious. “And you do it. You go out and you make people want to talk to you. Charles. You’re wasted on us.”</p><p>Gunn wanted to be all cool and gruff and shrug it away, but didn’t manage more than getting a slight twist to his smile. “Yeah, you can decide how much I’m worth when I’ve actually got us some business.” Then his smile faded and he turned as serious as Wesley, and slowly brought his right hand over and laid it on top of Wesley’s hand. Almost in a whisper: “Bed?”</p><p>Gunn had thought he was completely ready to get fucked, thought Wesley was way overplaying the older, more-experienced man. No one could need that much reassurance, no one could be that frightened of a slightly new experience, maybe a little pain. And then Wesley started pressing in and within seconds Gunn was rigid with shock and gasping at Wesley to stop. How could Wesley’s cock feel so huge and hard? Feel so blunt. Blunt like a weapon. Feel brutal. Like it had a mind of its own. Or no mind at all. It could split him in two and never notice. He’d taken more from Wesley’s fingers, he knew he had. But they had Wesley’s mind, they were completely Wesley. The cock pressing in had felt like it didn’t know him.</p><p>They were sorry, they were both sorry, they said it over and over. Wesley said they shouldn’t try again, not that night: Gunn was too tense now, it would be even worse.</p><p>“Is it always like this? Was it like this for you? You thought you were ready but you couldn’t guess how it would really feel?”</p><p>“I - I’m sure we didn’t think about ‘ready’. It was very difficult. I hoped it would be much easier for you. Easy.”</p><p>“Did you try it again with him?”</p><p>Wesley nodded.</p><p>“How long did it take before it got easy?”</p><p>“I can’t remember. I did get used to it. But we didn’t know what we were doing. We were young. I’m sure neither of us guessed there was anything to know. I did hope I’d learned enough to make it easier for you. I should have told you I’ve never…” Wesley sighed, frowned deeply. “No one’s ever wanted me to be their first before. I’m sorry.”</p><p>Gunn shook his head. “I panicked, that’s all. Must’ve, I dunno, taken in more prison stories than I realised. Oh, jeez, Wes! I didn’t mean - You were -” But Wesley had only looked slightly surprised, maybe even just puzzled. “Just for it to feel so different, when I loved your fingers, right from the start. Must be some part of me that still thinks it’s a big deal. That’s what I wasn’t ready for. Not this time.”</p><p>They got done with saying sorry and turned to kissing and stroking, and soon they were on a noisy, biting, bucking ride from one side of the bed to another. Afterwards, when Gunn was lying in his usual position curled over Wesley’s right side, he said, “Wes? Do I feel tense to you right now?”</p><p>“No. Why? Have you got a muscle cramp?” Wesley sounded serious, really concerned.</p><p>“Muscle cramp! English.” Gunn rolled his head to press his lips to Wesley’s ribs, then relaxed back. “I don’t want to wait until tomorrow. I want to try again tonight. It is a big deal and I want it now. Unless you’re about to fall asleep on me.”</p><p>“I’m wide awake. We may need to negotiate about ‘now’, though.”</p><p>Gunn felt the same clutch of shock when Wesley started pushing in, but he told himself it was panic, told himself some of the reasons, and he fought through it. All the way in, the cock felt huge, impossible, not-Wesley, but at some point what had been threatening and frightening started to become pure excitement, the most intense adventure. Almost too much, almost, to be so stretched, so full; to feel the effects of the fucking spreading further and further, like the cock could turn your whole body into nothing but sex. There was pain, but it didn’t frighten him like the first time; he knew from the start that it wasn’t going to get worse, it was just about how stretched he was right now, not a warning that the next inch could split him in two. A clean pain, part of the adventure. He couldn’t speak.</p><p>Wesley was able to speak, though, at least at first. Once he was full in, he held still and pressed himself the length of Gunn’s back, kissing Gunn’s neck, gasping Gunn’s name, and calling Gunn his darling. The word startled Gunn, seemed to hang like a hailstone in his brain, with his heart shivering beneath, waiting for the fall. The word belonged in a different world, the world of the song, too neat, too romantic. That world couldn’t cope, not for a second, with what Gunn was doing now, what he was feeling from this cock pushed deep in his ass. But Wesley kept on saying it, even as he started rocking against Gunn like Gunn had done his first time inside Wesley, and he was saying it with the same hunger, the same amazement that Gunn could hear in his own cries and gasps - and the word was changed for Gunn then, seared from the heat of their sex till it was as tough and fierce as anything they were doing or feeling.</p><p>Gunn was as impatient as Wesley that he didn’t want to be touched during the fucking: he didn’t want the distraction, and he’d much rather have Wesley use his arm to give more power and control to the fucking itself. He’d expected to come by Wesley’s hand, with Wesley still half-hard inside him; because that was how it had always been between them so far, and he did love to feel Wesley come that way. But then he would have missed Wesley’s mouth working above his own hand, and their fingers together circling and rubbing his hole, feeling it so slick and tender and aching.</p><p>“Did you know you were calling me ‘darling’?”</p><p>“Well, of course.” Surprised: “Haven’t I before?”</p><p>Gunn shook his head. “Kind of the last thing a big, axe-handy street-nigger expects to hear from a white guy.”</p><p>Wesley winced. “It’s an insult. I’m so sorry.”</p><p>“No, it’s…” A long pause. “It’s special. I thought I knew how you loved me. Didn’t know that sometimes you loved me like that. You surprise me, Wes.”</p><p>“But I always love you like that. Almost from the moment I really knew you wanted me, the moment I knew you’d want me again. Then you went from being kind, handsome, determined, inspiring, observant Charles to being all of that and mine in one word.” Wesley smiled, suddenly teasing. “And I’ll bet you haven’t even decided yet if I’m your ‘boyfriend’.”</p><p>Gunn made like he was alarmed. “Hey, don’t pressure me, man! I told you I don’t get serious with guys from out of state.” No, he didn’t have a single word like that to describe what Wesley meant to him, though it wouldn’t ever be “darling” unless living with Wesley managed to bleach every drop of street out of him. For other people, Wesley was going to be his “partner”. For himself… He discovered new things to describe in Wesley every day. There wasn’t ever going to be one single word.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Gunn next visited Caritas on Thursday night, and by that time he’d done a lot of thinking about how Angel Investigations could set itself at a larger market. He’d started by thinking about ways they could try to reach demons as well as humans, wondering how much they’d have to keep their work for humans separate from their work for demons, what sort of changes they’d need to make in their approach. Separate phone lines, maybe, with separate machines, and different messages on each machine. And then he’d listened to their outgoing message for the first time, and that had got him thinking a whole new set of thoughts about Angel Investigations and what it might be for .</p><p>“We help the helpless.” That had to put off at least as many people as it reassured. No one wants to think of themselves as helpless, sure as hell don’t want to be told they’re helpless. Yeah, you’ve been scared shitless since you had the bad luck to find out that demons are real, but you also had the guts to do something about it: to believe what you were seeing, to wonder how often it had happened before, and to go looking for other people who knew demons were real. That’s not “helpless”, that’s just knowing when you need to get an expert. OK, so Angel Investigations might end up putting themselves in danger for you, but Gunn would bet anything that when people called they didn’t expect heroes, didn’t expect heroics, any more than they would when they called a plumber. They wanted a solid opinion, and then at least one plan of action.</p><p>Wesley said that the message was from before his time, that Angel and Doyle had always answered the phone like that. He had himself, at first, when the calls for Angel Investigations still outnumbered the calls for his translation work.</p><p>“Is that the only type of work you guys have ever wanted to do? The out-and-out rescue missions, close as you can get to the visions? When they’re so desperate they’re way past pride, come begging the big heroes to save them?”</p><p>Wesley was truly shocked, looked at Gunn like he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “Charles, what are you - You know we have to help people. We do help people. It’s why we’re all here.”</p><p>“Dumping that message, that way of looking at the business… You’ll still get the rescue missions - those poor bastards’ll still be able to find you, still realise they’ve got the right place. But you might start to get people who don’t think they’re desperate, don’t wanna deal with heroes, just lookin’ for someone who knows the territory. Even down to…” Gunn shrugged. “I dunno, someone who isn’t in any kind of trouble, just wants a go-between. Got a business meeting with a demon, wants to know how to behave. If I find there’s work out there that isn’t life-or-death, would you do it? Or show me how to do it?”</p><p>“It isn’t…” Wesley frowned and shook his head slowly. “It isn’t about making money. We do have a mission. What if we’re so busy with your business meetings that the person who really is desperate can’t get through?”</p><p>“Wes, it wouldn’t be any different from dealing with the visions. You know more than anyone about checking in. About always bein’ ready for the person who really needs help. And you wouldn’t diss money if you’d lived some of the places I’ve had to live. Yeah, we’ll draw the line, but that desperate person needs us to be able to pay the rent. Pay the phone bill. Would you do it, the small stuff? Or is it… You’d rather stack shelves?”</p><p>“I’d do it. I think I’d do it. If I could. Someone wanting advice on how to behave, I’m the last person anyone should ask.”</p><p>The next big question was where Gunn should start with breaking them in to the not-helpless end of the market. He needed to find out what reasons people could have for taking an interest in demons (reasons that didn’t involve hurting someone else, or scaring someone else, or harassing a harmless demon – or breaking any other rule that Wesley or Angel or Gunn came up with between them). And then he needed to find out where people started looking when they were interested in demons, and what expert services they might be willing to pay for. Where would he find the people and their reasons? Caritas, obviously - main reasons there probably curiosity or boredom, but might be good for picking up rumours of other reasons. Wesley suggested the specialist bookstores and his translation clients, said he’d call and see which of them would talk to Gunn.</p><p>“You sure you want me to talk to them? Aren’t they gonna expect me to know about books? Speak all those languages?”</p><p>“I’ll explain you’re from a different side of the business. And I’ll tell you what I know about each of them. I wouldn’t ask them the right questions, not in the way that you would. I’m not looking for ways to change.”</p><p>All three bookstore owners agreed immediately to talk to Gunn. No need to make an appointment, drop in any time, sure, that week would be fine. The translation clients either said no or said they’d have to check and call back, and by Caritas-time on Thursday night only one client had said yes, with a meeting arranged for the following Tuesday.</p><p>“Lilah Morgan. One of my best clients. We meet at least once a month.”</p><p>“In the public library, like she’s set for Tuesday?”</p><p>Wesley nodded. “They have rooms for people who need to be able to shut themselves away in order to concentrate. Study carrels. She books one of those.”</p><p>“Huh.” Maybe she had something as bad as a mad vampire back in her office, too. Wesley wouldn’t have asked her, of course. “So what’s her deal?”</p><p>“Prophecies. She’s part of a small research team of financial analysts. They can get funding for anything that might predict how the markets will behave.” Wesley shrugged. “She says the scrolls are right often enough to make the team’s future secure. She seems rather paranoid but then I don’t know the financial sector. And I don’t know who she hired to investigate me before she gave me the first manuscript, but he found out about Angel.”</p><p>“Everything about Angel? That you’ve been workin’ with a vampire?”</p><p>“And the visions, too. ‘The vampire seer’. An object of some curiosity in the prediction business, apparently.”</p><p>“She wants to check me out. That’s why she agreed to the meeting.”</p><p>“That and trying to discourage us from offering our services to her competitors. I’m sure she’d rather our business stayed undeveloped.” Wesley smiled suddenly. “I think you’ll enjoy the meeting even if she’s determined not to help you directly. She definitely has a different perspective.”</p><p>Matt, Piriti and Grouw were all at Caritas when Gunn arrived, so it looked like he’d been right when he’d guessed that Thursday was one of their regular nights. Gunn got his beer then dropped by their table to say hi to Matt.</p><p>“Oh, hey! Y’came back.” To his friends: “This is Gunn. With that card I showed you.” The two demons nodded at Gunn, looking much like Gunn would have if a friend had introduced him to a middle-class guy who claimed to be an expert on life on the streets; sometimes you just have to accept that your friend has his blind-spots and agree to play nice (unless provoked). “You staying? Wanna pull up a chair?”</p><p>“OK with you?” The demons weren’t going to say no, but they’d want to be asked. After they said it was OK, Gunn found a chair and joined them, sitting between Matt and Grouw. He asked them if they’d sung yet, what they were going to sing, and they warmed to him while they were telling him about the Talking Heads song that they were breaking in.</p><p>“ ‘Houses in Motion’. Y’know it?” Gunn didn’t.</p><p>“No idea what it’s about, but it’s got this great bounce goin’ between the main vocals and the backing, ‘specially in the chorus. Matt knew, soon as he heard it, that we had to do it.”</p><p>Gunn asked Matt how he’d found the song. “My mom. It’s from, like, the seventies, or something. She was playin’ it in the car the last time we went to Palm Springs. ‘s our favourite album for driving now. Good strong beat, words you can argue about for hours.”</p><p>Gunn grinned. “Can’t wait to hear it.”</p><p>All of the nine or ten songs that they heard while they were waiting were love-songs - some hopeful, some grateful, some regretful, but all more-or-less sweet. The new song fell into this warm bath like a wind-up toy with a whole box of fizzing bath-salts strapped to its back. The beginning was strange, jarring, too much contrast between the angular rhythm and Matt’s smooth, almost-spoken vocals. “For a long time I felt, without style or grace, wearing shoes with no socks, in cold weather.” And what the hell was it about? “And as we watch him, digging his own grave.” But by the time Piriti and Grouw took over with the chorus the rhythm had snapped out of angular into crisp and catchy - yeah, perfect for driving. Gunn wanted to join in - most of the room did, judging from all the in-seat dancing.</p><p>Gunn bought them drinks. They wound down quite quickly: pleased with themselves, full of ideas for what they’d do better next time, but with enough of these on their score-card that they didn’t need to talk it all over right now. When people came over to the table to congratulate them on the new song, one of the three would usually introduce Gunn (as a non-singer who looked like becoming a regular); and then afterwards they’d explain to Gunn who he’d just met (or escaped meeting).</p><p>When the time got past eleven, Gunn started thinking about heading home. Grouw might have seen him checking his watch, had maybe planned this already with Piriti, because Grouw suddenly turned serious, leaned towards Gunn and said, “So this business you’re in? Where you been, to get to be such an expert on demons?”</p><p>“I been on the street, most of the streets in two, three miles from here. Keeping me ‘n’ my crew from goin’ down to vampires. Yeah, got a problem with vampires. Month ago, hadn’t even met another type of demon.”</p><p>Grouw shrugged. “Vampires. Yeah. So what you think you can do here? How many ‘Demons for Dummies’ books you read in that month?”</p><p>“I’m not the expert. Matt told you that, right? It’s my partner. He’s English, ‘s read more books, knows more languages than you can imagine. What I’ve seen, he can learn any language. First time I worked with him, it was because of some humans who’d seen some Massiac demons and got scared. He explained how they were harmless, how you could make sure no one bothered each other.”</p><p>Grouw was shaking his head. “Don’t know the Massiac.”</p><p>“They’re in tunnels in some parks. But that’s what I think we can do. And more, but don’t you think it’s worth an expert to learn how not to get bothered? Or do the bothering?”</p><p>Grouw looked at Piriti then Matt, then back at Gunn. “We’ll need to meet him.”</p><p>“Of course. Be better someplace we can talk. This is… I’ve only ever heard him listen to classical music.”</p><p>Matt said, “We’ll be at my place most of Sunday. Redondo Beach. Between two and three?”</p><p>“OK. Great. Wha’d’we bring?”</p><p>Piriti had been silent but now came straight in with: “The lyrics to ‘Houses in Motion’ translated into formal Chachaspe and into family Chachaspe, and into Hull. A list of all of the demons he’s met in the last twelve months, with names, dates and places. And the plan for a tour of L.A. likely to appeal to a Sas Vanna, including at least fifteen stops.”</p><p>Gunn nodded then raised his hand. “Have to write that down.” He went to get a request-sheet and a pen from the bar, then wrote what he remembered and checked it with Piriti. “The lyrics’ll be on the net, right?” Right. “So, where in Redondo Beach?” Matt gave him the address and his phone number, then Gunn folded the paper, put it in a pocket, and sat back and looked at the three of them, smiling slightly. “Y’do this a lot, do you? Checkin’ the new guys out? Like you’re the big committee, runnin’ half the town. Havta say, y’got it set up nice, with those secret identities. Hadn’t guessed for a second, till you just now broke cover.” What, was he supposed to act like it came natural to him, taking orders from a bunch of kids?</p><p>They glared at him, then Matt and Piriti gave near-identical snorts of amusement and were suddenly completely relaxed. Piriti said, “ ‘Secret identities’. We should change the name of the group.”</p><p>“What’re you now?”</p><p>“ ‘The Reasons’. The Three Reasons, for short.”</p><p>“That works, too.” Well, not really, but what was he, their manager?</p><p>Matt said, “We don’t use it. Why don’t we use it?”</p><p>“ ‘cos then we couldn’t change it when we found a better one.”</p><p>“Oh, yeah.”</p><p>Grouw was still glaring at Gunn, maybe even harder now he was on his own. Gunn met his eye and turned serious, waited for him to see that there was nothing here meant as a challenge. An invitation, that’s all Gunn meant, that it was time for them all to give up some of the bullshit, lighten the load. Finally Grouw said, “We got friends here. Be on us if you turn out to be a pair of assholes.”</p><p>“I know. Do the same myself. Well - If I was ever in a good enough mood to give the assholes a chance.”</p><p>Grouw nodded, not smiling. “Sunday, then.”</p><p>“Sunday, yeah.” Gunn got to his feet, put on his jacket, and picked up the pen to take it back to the bar. “Thanks, guys.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Gunn couldn’t believe how nervous Wesley got about Sunday: really anxious and obsessive, especially about the translations. Gunn spent a lot of Friday working with Wesley on the tour of L.A. Wesley produced a rough design first thing in the morning, and Gunn brought his local knowledge, did the research on the web, suggested improvements, and typed up the design through its various versions. Gunn also typed Wesley’s list of demons, which they had out of the way by midday on Friday.</p><p>The translations, though, Wesley had to do by hand and on his own, and Gunn saw him go through at least ten versions of each. Of all the things that Gunn tried with Wesley to get him to chill, only sex worked, though it worked very well, not only during, but for hours afterwards. And Wesley wanted to chill, got annoyed with himself, with the hair-trigger alarm in his brain. Still, Gunn would wake every morning to find himself alone in the bed, and Wesley next door in stubble and robe, refusing to admit how long he’d been back at work.</p><p>When Angel was having a good day (or a good half-hour), his reaction to Wesley’s state was half-concerned, half-amused. He’d bring Wesley a mug of tea, ask him how much longer he needed before he’d realise that he’d got it perfect the first time, and then usually check with Gunn what Wesley was working on, and why. Gunn told Angel about the plans to reach a larger market and Angel needed just as much persuading as Wesley; but Gunn had expected that, and was much softer-hitting and more patient than he’d been with Wesley. During the other times, not so good, Angel seemed so sensitive to Wesley’s anxiety that he wouldn’t even come into the room. He’d open the door of his room and then see Wesley and stand there for ten, twenty seconds, looking surprised and bewildered, like someone he trusted had just yelled at him for no reason. Then he’d back away, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, and shut himself in. Maybe he could feel Wesley’s tension directly, smell it, from the far side of the room. Or maybe it was enough that Wesley had not turned at the sound of the door, that somehow Wesley did not know that he was there.</p><p>On Sunday morning at about eleven, Wesley showered, shaved, and dressed in his best suit; and emerged almost relaxed, certainly no worse than a on healthy “alert”. The suit. Must be the suit.</p><p>Gunn had expected the group to look surprised when they saw Wesley, but then he hadn’t told them about Wesley the fighter, just about the books and the classical music. They acted at first like they’d all agreed just how to behave: very polite, like they were being taken out to dinner by friends of their parents. Gunn wondered about trying to break the ice, then decided that he was the only one who was feeling uncomfortable with the inch-thick company manners. The ice would melt in its own time, or he’d just get used to working like this.</p><p>They asked Wesley where he wanted to start, and he suggested that Piriti and Grouw should read his translations, and then they might have questions for him. Grouw was slower than Piriti to admit to being impressed, but Gunn thought that was just because he and Wesley had more difference in their ideas about what the song meant when it was in English.</p><p>“Yes, it could mean that. In which case I would render that line as ‘Max fyd, mer hayr, agan surg vic.’ I also thought it could mean…” In the course of his work Wesley had considered interpretations of the song that had never occurred to the group, and they obviously thought they’d already had every possible argument about “I’m walking a line - I hate to be dreaming in motion.” For a minute or so they seemed like they might forget Wesley and Gunn were even there, but Matt brought them back and asked about the tour plan.</p><p>Wesley gave out copies of the plan and talked them through it, explained that he’d aimed for a balance between the familiar and the exotic, making some assumptions about the background and interests of this Sas Vanna and what he might find familiar or find exotic. The tour had views, it had history (human, Sas Vanna, and generally-demonic; heart-warming, thought-provoking, scandalous, or just weird), it had food (human and Sas Vanna), it had driving, it had walking, it had wading, it had museums, and it had trash. Gunn didn’t care about this Sas Vanna, he knew a hundred people who’d sign up for that look at L.A. and so did the group, judging by all the laughing and nodding and starts of surprise.</p><p>Grouw said, “What are you doing the weekend after next?”</p><p>A brief look at Gunn, expressionless apart from raised eyebrows, then: “I have no idea. Why?”</p><p>“My sister Yan’s in town with one of her boyfriends. They’re both Sas Vanna. Half Sas Vanna. D’you want to come along and test out your tour? We’d do the meals and everything. Try to make it worth your while.”</p><p>Wesley looked briefly stunned, then went straight into flustered. He bent his head, fumbled with his papers, then cleared his throat hard before raising his head. Gunn had seen that determined, apprehensive expression several times now, and knew exactly what Wesley was going to do next.</p><p>Yes, he was handing over the copies of his list. “You shouldn’t decide anything until you’ve seen this. Most of these demons I met for no more than five minutes. And at the end of that time they were dead.”</p><p>Shock, and then all three scanned urgently through the pages of the list, mouths dropping open at the length. Matt was the first to recover. As apprehensive as Wesley: “Any Chachaspes? Or Hulls?”</p><p>“No. And no Sas Vanna.”</p><p>Grouw was glaring again. “Like he’d tell us if he had.”</p><p>“Better believe he would. He’s kinda stupid like that. Lie to save anyone except himself.” All four looked at Gunn, the group surprised and thinking, Wesley surprised and annoyed. Gunn raised his eyebrows and said to Grouw, “Ask him why. Why he had to fight them.”</p><p>Grouw checked briefly with Piriti, then: “So why?”</p><p>“Because they were harming or threatening people. Innocent people, who had offered no provocation whatever. We had to save the people.”</p><p>“That’s people as in humans.” Piriti was stating a fact, very certain.</p><p>“Yes. It’s what I was trained to do.”</p><p>Grouw said, “Harming humans how? Most of yours’d scream murder if me or Piriti walked past on the other side of the street. You trained to ask questions? Or just told the human’s always right?”</p><p>“I can take you through the list. You can decide on the degree of harm and on how I was trained.” A pause, then Grouw shrugged and nodded, and Wesley told them about the Photh near Houston, back in November.</p><p>By April, they’d heard enough. “OK. Even if there was a Hull on your list… You gotta right to protect your kind, when it’s like that. But it isn’t just demons who harm humans, nothing like. Why’n’t you protect humans from humans? Or do you?”</p><p>Wesley was shaking his head. “There’s a police force for that. The demons I’ve fought… You could say that they chose to operate in a place where they cannot be brought to the law. Or is there a parallel system that I haven’t heard about?”</p><p>Piriti said, “Not for anything on that scale. Not involving humans. Or not as a system?” The question was for Grouw, who nodded. “There are rumours of groups of residents - like my family - having to do what you do if someone’s getting stupid with humans. We have to live here.”</p><p>“And of course they don’t think to take nets, so they’ve no chance of bringing their target back alive.” Grouw’s tone had changed completely, was comfortable, like this was something he’d said a hundred times before.</p><p>Matt must have felt the change too, since the relief seemed clearer in his voice even than the teasing. “Well, I guess they haven’t heard all your sister’s net stories. Not even once.”</p><p>Grouw shrugged. “She makes half of them up.”</p><p>“Yeah. But which half? And which half makes them up?” Piriti was making a joke, not asking any real questions, and the other two laughed like it was a good joke, and then Grouw turned to Wesley and asked him again about the weekend after next.</p><p>“I see now why the translations were getting to you.” They had stopped on the way home for ice-cream and a walk on the beach. “That was kind of a dirty trick. Like asking you to translate ten different songs.”</p><p>“I don’t think it was deliberate. It’s just their favourite song at the moment, they couldn’t name another song if you paid them. And they like not knowing what it means, it makes it more of a game.”</p><p>“Yeah, more about the music. They’d said something like that.”</p><p>“It was an interesting problem. Tedious for you, though, I’m sorry. ‘Walk Like a Man’ would have been much more straightforward. So I’m stupid, am I?” There had been scarcely any pause or change of tone; the question must have been right there waiting, maybe for every minute of the last half hour.</p><p>“Well, I’d have to think very carefully before I sent you undercover. Most people try to think their way around trouble. Y’know? You’re either waitin’ for it. Or headin’ straight at it.”</p><p>“I’ve never had good results trying to avoid it. And it’s rarely as bad as you’d imagined. Telling yourself you can avoid it… You can make yourself a thin layer of feeling safe. But really you’ve just bought yourself another day of living in fear.”</p><p>“So you’d rather take the chance of having every demon in L.A. after you than live in fear for a day.”</p><p>Wesley shrugged. “There are many different kinds of fear. And I know I did the right thing: in killing the demons and in telling the boys. For me, it’s taking responsibility for my actions. Is that so stupid?”</p><p>Gunn shook his head. “I’d never expect you to do anything else. No one would, who had even the first idea about how to read your face.”</p><p>Wesley sighed. “I see. No undercover, then. What do you think of the boys? Do you like them?”</p><p>“Sure. Think they’re a great team. Don’t you?”</p><p>“They’re delightful. But I don’t think I could spend an entire day in their company. They’re just too young for me. Too boisterous. I’d get bored and want to be home with my book. And I don’t behave well when I’m bored like that.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“I sulk.”</p><p>Gunn laughed. “What excuse d’you wanna make, then? I still wanna go. And we have to, anyway, for the business. We’ve got two weeks – I know you can make me into Mister Junior Demon Expert in that time.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Gunn did enjoy his meeting with Lilah Morgan, although the two of them decided to hate each other pretty much on sight. No, not “hate”, it wasn’t nearly that important, to either of them. But Gunn read her with one look, down to the bones, knew they couldn’t have respect, they couldn’t have trust; and that also wasn’t important, because they both knew that they needed each other. So they smiled, and agreed, and were tirelessly interested, and both made the game so easy to play that they could have continued for twice the time.</p><p>She seemed sincere, though, in the good things she said about Wesley. She said a lot of the translators she worked with could be arrogant and defensive, and that Wesley’s modesty and honesty were refreshing. He’d only made one serious mistake that she knew of, and she knew of it only because he’d called her as soon as he’d realised. Too late, for that particular prophecy, but she hardly ever reminded him of that mistake now.</p><p>If she did deal directly with demons, she was never going to give him any details that he’d believe (“Yes, but only among the fabulously wealthy. And they all live in the sheltered dimensions. Taxes. The travel expenses would ruin you, before you could hope to see any return.”). The one thing that he did learn from the meeting was that he didn’t want to do business with people like her, even if that was the end of the market with money to burn, and even if he’d had a hope in hell of getting any more of her type to take meetings with him. You couldn’t deal with people that rich and stay clean. You just couldn’t. So he could forget all that and concentrate on Caritas and the bookstores, concentrate on looking for other leads in the part of the market that kept itself to this dimension.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Angel had a vision on Wednesday, just as they were starting their training session. The vision didn’t bring out Angelus and didn’t give Angel too hard a ride, so he was steady and lucid once he was free of the reverberation phase, and was able to tell them immediately that he knew the location: a water-tank built on the site of an abandoned convent. Wesley said that the demon in the drawings looked like a Thrall, in which case the figures in the robes were probably human worshippers who had been dragged under its spell and the vision must be telling them to kill the Thrall, which would free the worshippers from the spell.</p><p>“What’ll happen if they’re not freed?”</p><p>Gunn had put the question to Wesley, but the answer came from Angel. “With what we’ve got here, they’ll hack each other to death. There’s at least two groups in there. It felt as if they were fighting over how to worship it.”</p><p>“Hey! Our big chance to get mixed up in a religious war. What’re we waitin’ for?”</p><p>For most of the drive out to the water-tank, they were talking over the problem of having to fight the human worshippers. There were a lot of these worshippers, they were heavily armed, and they all seemed determined to fight to the death. How could you defend yourself against a mob like that, and not run the risk of killing one of them? More than one. Yes, they could all three live with the guilt, they would see it as an accident, but what to do about the police? Angel couldn’t turn himself in, Gunn wouldn’t (not for an accident, and not when it was obvious you couldn’t tell the cops one word of the real story), but Wesley… Wesley was really disturbed by the idea that he might start to think of himself as above human law. No, he wouldn’t turn himself in over the type of accident they were discussing - for the same reasons as Gunn - but he knew that having made that decision once, he would find it all too easy to make again.</p><p>Angel listened seriously to Wesley having all these doubts, but Gunn couldn’t help laughing at him. “Wes, you couldn’t slide down that slope if it was waxed to a shine. You might think you got a look of psycho vigilante, but I havta tell you that image gets trashed the second you open your mouth and start worryin’ like that. Anyway, we’re gonna sneak in, do that left-and-right thing to slip behind the Thrall ‘n’ split its head. They won’t see us before it’s all over, and if they do, one of us’ll get through in time. Save y’r worrying for some other buncha dopes.”</p><p>They did sneak in, and Gunn got around behind the Thrall and split its head open before the worshippers had noticed any one of them. The worshippers didn’t seem to notice them afterwards, either. Very strange, how they acted once it was over, not like they’d been freed, more like they’d just switched to another spell. No “Where the hell am I? Who’re all of you? What’s with the robes and the swords? And, oh God! what’s that dead thing stuck in the floor?” They just dropped the swords, shrugged out of the robes, then made for the stairs, like they’d all done this ten, twenty times before.</p><p>On the way home Gunn called Matt to tell him that Wesley wouldn’t be able to come on the tour. “He’s giving me the background, though. The stories. Not sayin’ it’ll be just as good or anythin’, but should still be fun. That’s OK, yeah?”</p><p>That was fine. “Gonna be at the club tomorrow?”</p><p>“Should be. Around nine?” Gunn had already planned to go to Caritas on the Thursday night. The boys had obviously seen enough on Sunday to decide that he and Wesley weren’t a pair of assholes, and Gunn hadn’t wanted to push for any more than that at the time. But he didn’t want to wait until the tour before he did the follow-up, found out if they really did know people in Caritas who could use an expert like Wesley.</p><p>“Great. See you then, man.”</p><p>They were on a table at the far side of the room, and they’d kept a chair free for Gunn. He’d just missed seeing them sing “Wouldn’t it be nice?” and their next song should be either “Werewolves of London” or “Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night”. Piriti was choosing all the songs tonight, their way of making up to him for the hard week he’d had at home.</p><p>Matt asked after Wesley, and Gunn told them that Wesley had been reading some stories in Chachaspe. “He thought, from the title, they were going to be about dreaming - still got the song in his head - but they’re mostly about dealing with strangers.”</p><p>Later, Grouw asked Gunn if he knew how Wesley had lost his arm. “That was one of the demons he said he didn’t kill. From near the beginning of the list. The Kungai.”</p><p>“Oh. But he made it sound like…”</p><p>“Yeah. Well, he would.”</p><p>Matt said, “Was it an accident?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“You don’t want to talk about it, either.”</p><p>Gunn shrugged. “Don’t know much about it. Was before I met him. Think he nearly died.”</p><p>A sombre silence, then Grouw said, “But he was back. Saving his humans again. Couldn’t have been much more than a month after.”</p><p>“Like I said, he’s stupid some ways.”</p><p>“Is that why he hired you? To help with that side? You’d been doin’ the same, right? With vampires.”</p><p>“He didn’t hire me. He’s my partner, he’s not my boss. But, yeah, that was how we met. First obvious thing we had in common.”</p><p>“What else do you have in common?” Piriti sounded curious, slightly puzzled.</p><p>“Enough to like working together.”</p><p>Grouw said, “You gonna become an expert, like him?”</p><p>“Not a chance, with the languages. I learn a tenth of the rest, I’ll be doin’ well. He’s been studyin’ his whole life. And he loves to study. I’m more about gettin’ out, gettin’ things moving.”</p><p>Piriti grinned and said, “Like you’d be doing now, if the three of us’d stop talking about our ‘happy’ songs and let you get down to business?” Matt and Grouw laughed, and all three looked at Gunn expectantly.</p><p>A few seconds, then: “That was only about half a dig, yeah?”</p><p>Grouw shook his head. “Not even that. We put you through the secret identity thing. Know you didn’t do all that work so you could listen to us argue, and then give up another weekend. Thought you’d’ve called us on Monday, or something.”</p><p>Gunn shook his head. “Yeah, I’m that pushy, but Wes said... So you’d be OK about Wes and me talkin’ to your friends here? Not asking for introductions or anything. But if we handed out cards and people asked you about us, you wouldn’t, like, warn ‘em off?”</p><p>“Only for your sake, ‘cos some guys you don’t want calling. No, we’ll do more than that. We’ll tell you ‘bout who we know, not just in this crowd. You know, what we’ve heard, where you might start. And put the word round.”</p><p>Matt said, “For what the word’s worth, coming from us. There’s only so much respect a kickin’ Talking Heads chorus’ll get you in this town.”</p><p>“And some of us still get sent out to collect bark whenever the conversation might get interesting.” Looked like Piriti’s hard week had mostly been about getting treated like a kid. “ ‘nother few years I’m gonna have to move to a different dimension, change my name and pretend to be a fifth-brooder, just so I can find out what proper gossip sounds like.”</p><p>“Yeah, but you’re not sneakin’ off without us. Respectable fifth-brooder can’t travel without his entourage. Like, his mysterious Hull personal trainer.”</p><p>“And his tame human that he raised from a puppy. Look! I can carry eggs in my mouth.” Matt opened his mouth wide, looking every inch the eager puppy proud of his new trick.</p><p>When Piriti had stopped giggling, he turned to Gunn and said, “So when d’you want to start? We could come round some evening. Spend a solid hour or two fillin’ you in.”</p><p>“Um… Be great, but have to be somewhere else.” Gunn pulled a face. “Got this roommate situation.”</p><p>“Oh God, roommates!” Grouw nodded and sighed. “What about Wesley’s place?”</p><p>“No, he’s got the exact same situation. ‘s a long story. Angel, guy who founded the business. He and Wesley go way back. But he got sick, had to stop working. And he’s sick in a way that…” Gunn shook his head hard. “He can’t have people in the apartment.”</p><p>Grouw was the one who broke the silence. “You’re saying he’s your roommate too? This sick guy. You and Wesley sort of lookin’ after him?”</p><p>“Sort of. Way it worked out. Like I said, long story.”</p><p>Piriti looked almost scared. “Is it really tough?”</p><p>“No, not really. He’s not whiny or anything. Just some things you have to work around.”</p><p>Matt shrugged. “My place then. Or how d’you feel about getting your hands dirty? Piriti’s got this project he needs to work on. Home improvements thing. That’s what we got planned for Saturday afternoon. I know, weekends again. But it’s the best time when we’re all free.”</p><p>“Sounds good. Where’s the project? I need to bring anything? Work-clothes? I’ll see what Wes is doing, but it’ll probably just be me again.”</p><p>Wesley was asleep when Gunn got home, but nearly choked on his breakfast coffee when Gunn told him about the plans for Saturday. Finally he got the laughing and spluttering under control, but then just stood and shook his head for the longest time.</p><p>“Charles. I don’t know what I expected when you came to join us. This isn’t supposed to happen, not even with your talent for meeting people. Two humans building a nest for a Chachaspe! There may be fifty people alive who’d understand what that means. And none of them would believe it.”</p><p>Gunn smiled. “That’s another reason you’re not coming? ‘cos you couldn’t tell anyone about it?”</p><p>“I’d much rather hear about it. Leave the minute-by-minute details to my imagination.”</p><p>Gunn thought he had some idea of Wesley’s imagination, but he was taken completely by surprise when he got home early on Saturday evening to find Wesley extremely horny. Wesley definitely wouldn’t let him change his clothes or shower off the sweat and grit. Wesley wanted him in the bedroom, immediately.</p><p>Gunn had never seen a lover so hungry for his skin. Wesley pressed himself against Gunn, slid over him, around him, the movements too slow and determined to be called restless, but constant, always pushing for more. Gunn found it exciting, maybe even more so because none of it seemed to be meant for him, done to make him feel good, not even the kissing. This was all about Wesley; this was something between Wesley’s imagination and Gunn’s skin.</p><p>Afterwards, Gunn said, “So it gets to you like your stubble gets to me? The idea of me nest-building with demons.”</p><p>“No, I wasn’t even really thinking about that. Just about you out in the sun. With your new friends. Your hands in the earth. I can still smell the sun on you.” Smiling: “You weren’t thinking about me at all, were you?”</p><p>“Um. Not really. We were busy. Lots to talk about. Piriti’s brother was there. New songs. And some really old ones. Finding more money for beer.”</p><p>“You had an ordinary day with friends.”</p><p>“Well, one way to look at it. Just yesterday you were all woo-hoo about the wackiness of me getting to help with the nest. Sounds like you’re over that.”</p><p>“Anything but. You did have a good day, though? They are friends?”</p><p>“Yeah, it was a blast. They’d’ve driven you crazy but they make me laugh.”</p><p>“I’m glad.” Wesley raised himself up on his elbow and looked down at Gunn, studying Gunn’s face, watching his own hand as it stroked Gunn’s head.</p><p>Gunn could feel Wesley becoming excited again. He lifted his hand and touched his fingers to Wesley’s lips, then laid the back of his hand against Wesley’s throat. “Love the way you show you’re glad. How you gonna be next weekend, when we’ve been out all day havin’ fun with your tour?”</p><p>“Well, at the risk of sounding conceited, that probably won’t be an ordinary day. And you’ll be thinking of me too much. Today was… I don’t know. Imagining you as if we hadn’t met yet. Or as if I was the sun on you, I was your clothes. You were doing all of these normal, simple things, nothing to do with me. But I could feel your body as if I was the air around you.”</p><p>“Wow. English. Wow.” Gunn slid his hand around to the back of Wesley’s neck, and drew him down into a long kiss. “But now I’ll be thinkin’ of you whenever I’m out in the sun. Know that’s the opposite of what you need to imagine. But you’ve told me now.”</p><p>Wesley shook his head. “Enough sun. Enough songs. Enough sand under your nails. You’ll forget me until it’s time to collect the empty beer-bottles and head for home.”</p><p>Much, much later, when Wesley was at least a hundred percent fucked, and they’d slept for about half an hour, and had just agreed that they would get up and shower (but not yet): “So you met Piriti’s brother? What’s he like?”</p><p>“God. Incredibly shy. Would only speak to Piriti, and in Chachaspe. Think that was mostly because I was there. They look like they’re identical. But you can tell them apart in a second just from the way they hold themselves.”</p><p>“Were they physically affectionate with one another?”</p><p>“Oh, boy! Practically makin’ out. I was gonna get to that. How’d’you know?”</p><p>“I’d wondered, from what I’d read about the Chachaspe. And other species where the males from a generation raise the children together. Scarcely even meet the females. Their sex drive has to work differently from ours. I’ve never seen anything written about the females having a need for physical bonding. Not with anything. But any number of scandalised footnotes about the way the males behaved with each other. I couldn’t find out if it was overtly sexual, though.”</p><p>“Matt said it wasn’t. I asked him when the two of us were goin’ for beer. He said Piriti doesn’t understand sex as somethin’ you’d do for fun. With another person. For him sex is all about the nest. Somethin’ about the smell of eggs in the nest. He doesn’t have fantasies about it, he doesn’t wanna do it. But he gets spooked at the idea of having to sleep apart from his brother. And, yeah, that’s what it looked like when I looked again.”</p><p>“I’m glad we’re not Chachaspe.”</p><p>“They seemed happy together. But yeah. The brother asked at the end if he could come along next weekend. Could see that was a big surprise to Grouw and Matt. Course we said yes. And he couldn’t cope with that, was gone into one of his tunnels.” Gunn had snapped his fingers to show the speed. “Nearly killed us, stoppin’ ourselves from laughin’ at him.” He laughed now, and Wesley too. “Just hoping Grouw’s sister and the boyfriend are OK with him. Everyone says I’ll like the sister. Grouw says she’s a jewel.” Gunn sighed. “Kind of sweet, isn’t it? He must really miss her when she’s away working.”</p><p>Dinner, about an hour later, was a tuna salad. Or “tyoona”, as Wesley kept on calling it, said he never stop calling it because he liked to think that the language he spoke was English, and he could see no good case for abandoning his standards, even if it did take him half an hour to make himself understood whenever he placed his order in Subway. Gunn loved Wesley’s rants, wanted to take him straight back to bed.</p><p>“You just like being difficult.”</p><p>“I am the soul of reason. The people behind me in the queue at Starbucks are grateful to me for explaining so thoroughly why ‘small’, ‘medium’ and ‘large’ are entirely adequate to the task of describing a range of three sizes, and that the management’s decision to defect to the G word and the V word can be seen only as a ludicrous and unhelpful pretension.”</p><p>“Grateful, yeah?”</p><p>“Indeed. They always show a lively and touching interest in where I’m from. And in how soon I’m going back.”</p><p>Gunn had just started his slice of pie when Wesley said, “Grouw’s sister. Tell me again what work she does.”</p><p>“She’s a prison guard. They really have whole prison dimensions?”</p><p>“They certainly do. You know, I don’t think Grouw was saying she was a jewel. I think he said ‘dual’. As in dual control, dual nationality. Have you ever heard him order tuna?”</p><p>“So what’s that mean? I guess she’s got two sets of paperwork or something, if she works in this other dimension.”</p><p>“She’s got two bodies. She’s a dual-body demon. One body would be a Hull, the same as Grouw. And the other body would be a Sas Vanna. Her boyfriend is probably a dual as well. They’re very popular for security work. You get two guards for the price of one. Or at least less than the price of two.”</p><p>Wesley had to be joking again. Didn’t he? “You saying there’s gonna be four of them on the tour? Damn! but the boys are getting their money’s worth. I thought we’d fit in two cars.”</p><p>“If she was born here, then you’ll just see her in the combined body. They can only split in some dimensions, and never in the native dimension.”</p><p>Gunn stared at Wesley. “Show me some pictures.” Wesley brought three books to the table, but the first was enough to convince Gunn. “But this looks like the combined body’s just about the same size as each of the separate bodies. It doesn’t add up. Or is that ‘cos of how it’s drawn?”</p><p>Wesley shook his head. “There are theories about where the mass comes from or goes to. All impossible to test. You’re going to meet two dual-body demons next weekend. That’s very exciting.”</p><p>“Exciting enough that you could come along and not sulk? About not being at home with your books.”</p><p>“Maybe too exciting. I’d stare. Ask inappropriate questions.”</p><p>“Ask them to do tricks?”</p><p>“Very possibly. If the boyfriend wasn’t born here then maybe…” Wesley swallowed then shook his head sharply. “No. I will stay home. But can I give you some questions to ask in case the subject comes up?”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Gunn was out on the tour from Saturday evening to Sunday afternoon. Wesley had worked out the schedule very carefully, setting a suitable time of day or night for each item and also making time for sleep. The night was firmly booked for the walking and the wading and also for breaking into museums and cemeteries, but there was a surprising amount that they could do during the day if they used Wesley’s methods for keeping out of sight of humans. Wesley had said they were really all Angel’s methods – from Angel’s knowledge of L.A.’s tunnels and of safe routes into useful and interesting places - but Wesley must have remembered pretty much everything that Angel had ever told him about how to make good use of L.A. when you couldn’t get caught in the sun.</p><p>Matt and the two Chachaspe demons hit their limit at about four in the morning and went back to Matt’s place to sleep, leaving Gunn on his own with three (or could be five) fearsome-looking demons. They voted to leave the cemetery for another weekend, and instead decide over noodles what to do with the rest of the night. Gunn was the only human in the noodle bar; the demons, mostly Hulls, showed very little surprise, but Grouw warned him not to visit the bar on his own, or not just yet.</p><p>“Like I said, I used to work here. If there’s someone on shift who remembers seeing you here with me, you’ll be fine. Took three, four visits before I knew there’d be someone who recognised Matt. And he’d never try it, anyway, but you’re different.”</p><p>“How long d’you work here?”</p><p>“Couple of years. Evening deliveries for a couple of years before that. I left about a year ago when I got the job in the garage. I’d had enough of working shifts.”</p><p>Gunn nodded, then asked Yan and her boyfriend Chaudoy if they worked shifts. They did, but the schedules were very regular and the entire dimension was geared to the shift system; you didn’t get that sense of being cut off, forced against the flow of normal life.</p><p>“Are you on the same shift?”</p><p>“No. We could ask for a transfer. But we’ve both been in our current shifts for several years, and we’ve got other friends and lovers fitted around them.” Yan suddenly grinned wide enough that Gunn could see all three rows of teeth. “It’s a very delicate ecosystem.”</p><p>Gunn smiled. “You’ve got more than two shifts, right? Or you’d never have got to meet.”</p><p>“Three. We knew each other by sight, from changeover. Like this.” She gestured at herself and Chaudoy. “But we didn’t meet each other’s Sas Vanna until recently. There was an escape -”</p><p>“Attempted escape.” Still a sore subject, from the way Chaudoy had muttered the words to his bowl of noodles. Or maybe it was a joke between them.</p><p>“And all shifts from our sector were put on the capture. So that’s how we saw each other working.”</p><p>“You liked each other’s style?” Could have been him and Wesley.</p><p>Grouw laughed. “Mostly they liked each other’s Sas Vanna. They’d’ve been combined at shift-change. For the briefing.”</p><p>“Oh. So you work separated?”</p><p>Chaudoy looked more surprised than Yan. “You haven’t met many duals?” He pronounced it “jewel”, too. Gunn shook his head. “We only combine at work when we need to pool information or reach a joint decision.”</p><p>“What about away from work?”</p><p>The two duals looked at each other, then Yan said, “It depends what we’re doing.”</p><p>“Do you - Do your Sas Vanna and your Hull have separate dates?” Gunn winced. “Sorry. None of my business.”</p><p>“Not what Grouw says.” Then she flashed another grin, and then shrugged. “My Sas Vanna, my Hull and I have different tastes. Can’t remember the last time even two of us agreed on someone.”</p><p>Now Gunn wanted to ask about the two of them coming on this weekend. Yan had been born here - in Florida - so she’d have to stay combined all weekend. And sounded like Chaudoy wouldn’t look at her twice when she was combined; and her combined form didn’t want any part of him. Guess she really wanted to see Grouw, Chaudoy really wanted to see L.A. Imagine: a weekend away with Wesley, and Wesley not wanting him, not at all. Gunn shivered and changed the subject, made another suggestion for what they could do next.</p><p>They decided, in many slow stages, to go to the Hollywood sign - take in the view for a while, maybe stay and see the sunrise. Soon after they’d decided Yan said to Grouw, “Where’s the nearest place I can get cigarettes? Is it still that little store on Sunset?” Grouw nodded and Yan made to stand up, but Chaudoy - who was nearer the door - put his hand on her arm.</p><p>“I’ll go, if it’s just a couple of blocks. Just tell me where.” Grouw gave directions, and then the demon across the table from Gunn was a full Sas Vanna, just like the pictures in Wesley’s books, and there was another type of demon, taller, thinner, and all scarlet and scaly, walking away from Gunn towards the door. Gunn hadn’t seen them split apart, and he had been looking straight at Chaudoy at the time. Felt almost like there’d been no split, more a straight switch, one demon taken off, and the two put in. All three were wearing completely different clothes.</p><p>Of course he was staring. The Sas Vanna laughed at him, Grouw smirked, and Yan shook her head. “You’d think he was going for a record. Like there was a prize. Anyone lets slip that they’ve never seen a dual before, then it’s just a matter of time.”</p><p>Gunn managed to stop gawping. “Don’t blame you. Good trick.” What the hell did it feel like, doing that? “D’you have different names? Or are you all ‘Chaudoy’?”</p><p>“Depends who’s doing the calling.”</p><p>They paid the bill and left as soon as the scarlet demon came back. Gunn didn’t see the two combine again. He was talking routes with Grouw while the others were getting into the back seat, and that must have been when it happened.</p><p>Yan had needed cigarettes so she could sit and smoke while the sun came up, and it was a good sunrise, definitely the right thing for them to do. They barely spoke as they waited, not like they’d had enough of each other, but like they all had enough thoughts that they were happy to sit and be quiet for the last half hour of the night. Gunn thought about vampires. About visions. Things down in those streets that most people wouldn’t believe. And watching over the streets something even stranger. Impossible to guess at the choices, the reasons, the limits behind the visions. Pointless trying. People were alive down there who would have been dead. See that, know that, and you’ve got all you need.</p><p>Matt had left the door unlocked. They were all fast asleep: Matt sprawled on the couch, and the brothers curled around one another underneath the table. Yeah, a few hours of that would be good before they set out for the daylight parts of the tour. The duals took the main bedroom, Gunn won the coin-toss and took the single bed, and Grouw slept on the floor behind the couch.</p><p>Gunn was tired, but found himself lying awake thinking about Wesley. Mostly. Thinking some about his crew. If Wesley had come along, what would be different? Maybe nothing about the tour, maybe they’d’ve had the same vote about noodles and the sign. But what would be different right now? Probably, he and Grouw would have given Wesley the bed, wouldn’t need even to talk it over, because Wesley obviously needed privacy more than them, being the oldest, and so English, and with his injury. And Gunn would have told Grouw that he’d sleep on the floor in the single bedroom. He probably would have slept on the floor, too. The bed was too small for both of them. But large enough for them to hold each other for a while. To kiss. To talk about how much their lives had changed, how happy they were that their lives had changed.</p><p>And that lead to thinking about his crew, how he was here because he’d left his crew. He wondered what his crew had imagined would happen to him when he left. Wesley so uptight, so out of place, his only friends would have to be other uptight white guys, like Angel, or even weirder. And Gunn the token black, nothing at all to say to half of Wesley’s friends. God, how bored would he be, how much would he be longing for the next time he’d get sent out to kill a demon? Gunn would probably have to let his crew go on imagining just that, since he could never tell them the truth about even the dullest five minutes of his new life. He was in a house full of demons, two next door who could kill him in a second, take half his arm off with one bite. But he would sleep as sound as Matt was sleeping downstairs on the couch. He’d met Wesley, and everything in his life had changed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Part Three</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gunn had decided they’d be better keeping the human and the demon markets separate. They’d keep the name Angel Investigations for the human market so someone who’d heard of them from the early days could still find them, and for the demon market they’d have a new name: Wyndham Gunn. Separate phone-lines, too. The phone in the apartment would still be for Angel Investigations, and they’d use Gunn’s cellphone for Wyndham Gunn.</p>
<p>Gunn set up two email addresses and made two websites: both very plain, but looking much more like the work of sane people than anything from their competitors; and hopefully looking different enough from each other that someone who found both sites wouldn’t get them confused. He got new cards made for himself and Wesley for both businesses, and he decided to leave the street address off all of the cards and say instead just “Inglewood”.</p>
<p>Really, they could do with an office, especially for meetings with demons - an office covered by the same type of spell as Caritas. But they just couldn’t afford it. Wesley said that even when he and Angel had the office, a lot of clients preferred to meet somewhere else - a bar, usually, or a coffee shop - somewhere that they’d chosen for themselves. Gunn came up with a list of four central locations for meeting humans, so he and Wesley would be ready with suggestions if someone asked for a location. The list of locations for meeting demons started out with just Caritas, but Gunn gave himself two weeks to find them other places that were also safe, but had less noise and longer opening hours.</p>
<p>He’d taken a stack of his Wyndham Gunn cards along to Caritas on the Thursday before the tour, and he’d given a set each to Matt, Grouw and Piriti. Grouw told him during the tour that they’d given cards to five or six people in Caritas, and that he’d given some to people at work and to his roommates; the roommate with the largest and most complicated family had gone home for the weekend, and Grouw thought he’d probably mention the tour to his family, at the very least.</p>
<p>Gunn had thought they’d have weeks to wait, with him spending most days of those weeks looking for demon hangouts where he could meet clients, listen out for gossip, or at least leave a few cards. No way L.A.’s demons were gonna be lined up around the block, like they’d been lying awake nights over shaky translations and complicated research. The first call came on the Monday after the tour, and Gunn told himself it was just some kids playing a joke, seeing if the card was for real; there wasn’t really a shelter for homeless demons, not even in L.A., not anywhere, and there certainly wasn’t some poor, lost demon, that no one knew where he was from. Gunn called Matt as the first stage in trying to check with Grouw, and Matt told him straight-off that, yeah, there was a shelter, Grouw had spent some time there a few years back, when he’d hit a bad patch after his family had skipped town. So Gunn was wrong several ways, and they had their first case, really that soon.</p>
<p>The shelter was run by a religious order, tiny little demons with way too many arms, who thought the meaning of life was all tied up with travelling. Or maybe with making your way in a strange place. Gunn could live without understanding the details for now; maybe later, if it looked like they’d be seeing much more of the shelter. The lost demon was probably a kid, maybe not very bright. It had been found wandering the sewers near Universal Studios. Got separated from its tour party? Or brought to L.A. by accident, stowed away or something? First priority was finding out what it would eat, then they’d work on getting it home. The kid ate most kinds of snails, and the monks (or nuns) had found its family by Thursday - as Grouw told Gunn at Caritas on Thursday night.</p>
<p>They got paid fifty bucks, which the monks had said upfront was all they could afford. Not a great rate for ten hours or more of intensive research and snail-collecting, but better than nothing. Wesley hadn’t wanted to take the money, thought they should treat the shelter the way they treated Anne’s, and of course he was right, but Gunn really needed to hold that money: the very first earnings for Wyndham Gunn.</p>
<p>By the next Monday they’d had four more calls and two emails, had earned a hundred bucks more, and had meetings set up with a school and an employment agency that might just possibly lead to a very useful amount of regular work. Gunn started putting more and more of his time to learning his way around Wesley’s books, building up his working knowledge of demons so he could take some of the load off Wesley. The time might come when they would have to turn away work. The time might even come when he could run an entire case on his own.</p>
<p>Angel was confused sometimes about their new work, especially at first. He’d see Wesley surrounded by books and he’d think it was a case like their old ones, like the visions. He’d ask how dangerous this demon was, what sort of weapons he should get ready. Wesley and Gunn explained, and the first three or four times he reacted with the same harsh disbelief each time, but then he remembered better and better. By the beginning of December, when they got their first check by mail ($320), Angel no longer needed an explanation, but asked instead about progress on their current cases, whether there’d been any more calls. Sometimes he could help: he checked email, did research online, improved their website, and sometimes he’d surprise them with how much he knew about demons. But then he’d been around for ten times longer than Gunn.</p>
<p>Angel envied them the work, Gunn was sure. Being busy and useful, coming back every day with five, ten stories about the amazing L.A. that they were just starting to discover. Of course Angel would never admit to anything like envy, had to say instead that this new work was all kind of tame, compared with the good old days of Angel Investigations. Gunn saw the twist of pain cross Wesley’s face, and wondered how Angel could miss noticing how hard Wesley took any reference to Doyle. Because that’s what Angel meant by “the good old days”: the time before Wesley, when Angel was working with his friend Doyle. If Doyle had lived and had kept the visions, would the Powers have seen any reason to save Wesley from the Kungai?</p>
<p>“Yeah, sure it’s tame. You wanna opt out, not take your share of what it’s bringin’ in, you tell us. We c’n find our own plans for the money. Y’know, maybe get somethin’ tame like a pool table.”</p>
<p>Yes, Angel envied them. He had to, stuck in here without even a TV, no connection to the living, working world except what the visions forced on him. Gunn couldn’t imagine how he’d deal with that himself; except that he’d do it in a way that didn’t hurt Wesley.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Four weeks to the day since Gunn had passed the first batch of business cards out to the boys, and he and the boys were in Caritas as usual for a Thursday night. Well, would have been as usual except Wesley called after half an hour to say that Angel had had a vision about a nest of vampires, Gunn shouldn’t come back to the apartment but should go directly to Vernon and La Salle. Wesley was at the trunk of the car when Gunn arrived, sorting out crossbows, axes, stakes and holy water.</p>
<p>“The house is around the block. There are between six and eight vampires. There are people in the house, being held in separate rooms. They’ve been chained up, may have been there for several days. I don’t know the layout of the house. We’ll have to rely on surprise. Can you carry two crossbows in this time?”</p>
<p>“What about Angel?” Angel was still sitting in the car. Gunn bent down to look in at him, and saw him flinching away from something, acting kind of panicked - like there was a wasp shut in the car with him.</p>
<p>“We can’t use him. He hasn’t really come out of the vision, he’s not seeing what’s in front of him. It’s as if he’s trapped in a nightmare. I brought him with me in case he could identify the house from the outside. And I think he did, I think he reacted to one of the houses. But it felt as if…” Wesley was shaking his head. “Almost as if he was seeing the house as a dream that he was having inside the nightmare. As if the image only got through to him because it belonged inside the nightmare. We can’t trust him to fit into any plan. Not like this.”</p>
<p>There were three people in the house, all kids off the street, all terrified, all suffering the effects of confinement and loss of blood. They knew each other, had all been taken together two days ago, and the vampires had been playing with them; the lead vampires got even more pleasure from head-games than they did from blood. And, OK, that meant the kids were still alive, but who the hell would wait two whole days before sending a vision for them? What had Wesley said about the Powers? “Benign incompetence” versus “callous efficiency” - great choice.</p>
<p>Afterwards, Gunn took the kids to hospital in the truck while Wesley took Angel home in the car; best to keep the kids away from Angel, no guessing how his nightmare would react to the sight of them. Wesley was only at home for long enough to lock Angel in his room, and he joined Gunn in the waiting room at the hospital after half an hour.</p>
<p>“Was he difficult?”</p>
<p>“No. He did let me guide him. Well, push him, mostly - it was safest to stay out of range of his arms. He was fending things off. Shouting. I thought about the gag but… The noise didn’t seem any worse than the TV upstairs.”</p>
<p>“He been like this before?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “You’ve seen him the way he usually is after a vision. Where it’s obviously still vivid to him, the most important thing in the world. But he knows it’s about someone else. And it leaves enough of his head clear that he can take action. Ask the right questions. Work with us. When it’s Angelus… He thinks each vision is a personal invitation. That the cruelty is calling out to him. But he does come out of the visions, he does know where he is, he sees exactly how we’re stopping him from answering the call. This time… No, I’ve never seen anything like this. A vision that doesn’t let go, not after he’s finished drawing, not even after the people are safe.”</p>
<p>“Could be he’s like this ‘cos it was vampires?”</p>
<p>A shrug. “Maybe. But they’ve never had this effect before. He might be able to tell us later. Though he’s never been able to explain any patterns in the type of vision that brings out Angelus.”</p>
<p>Gunn had called Anne to check that she had room in the shelter for the kids. They had several hours to wait in the hospital, but then the kids were all released in the space of twenty minutes, so Wesley took two to the shelter in the car while Gunn took the third in the truck. Anne didn’t need any help, and they got home around midnight.</p>
<p>They didn’t try to look in on Angel before they went to bed, but Gunn understood just from the sounds exactly what Wesley had been saying about Angel being trapped in a nightmare. A nightmare happening to him, not to some poor kid, not to someone else. He was crying out and begging and flailing, like he was one of those kids, seeing the vampires coming back for him, over and over again, hearing the same terrible things happening to his friends. Crying out about so many things, in so many ways: you’d think the vision had made Angel live every second of those two days before the kids had been saved.</p>
<p>Once they were in the bedroom Gunn couldn’t hear Angel, not even when the light was out and he seemed to be able to hear every other sound in the apartment block. “God. Think if I listened much longer, I’d start to think I could tell which vamp was with him. How many there were. All the… All the differences.” No response from Wesley, not even a grunt; though Wesley’s body got even more tense. “Wes?” Almost a whisper. “He’ll sleep it off. He’ll be OK tomorrow.”</p>
<p>Angel had gone quiet by morning, but you couldn’t say he was OK. When he came out to get blood, he moved like he was half asleep, and when he looked at things, at either of them, it was like he was seeing them from the middle of a slow, calm dream, the type of dream where you accept anything that’s happening. He didn’t heat the blood, drank it straight from the flask, and then stayed kneeling in front of the open fridge until Wesley took the flask from him, wiped the blood from his mouth, and then coaxed him to his feet and back to his room. He stayed the same all day, and Wesley locked him in his room when they went out to train.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Angel said he didn’t know why he’d taken so long to come out of the vision with the vampires; it was a disturbing vision but there had been worse, and his nightmares were usually about things that were truly personal, where he really had been there. The next vision was much easier on Angel and he came out of it within minutes, but then as missions went, this one was really more of an errand. The vision hit on Tuesday afternoon of the next week, and Angel drew a picture of a young Hispanic man sitting in a diner looking thoughtful. The diner was in Lawndale, at Marine and Freeman. The young man was thinking of doing something that would turn out badly; his new friends were not what he thought, they had sinister plans for him. He had to be told to leave town for at least two months, and going down to Carlsbad tonight to spend a few days with his sister would be a good start.</p>
<p>The picture, the address and the importance of leaving came during the reverberation phase, and afterwards Angel told them about the sister in Carlsbad, and about the sense of impending doom. No images, no details, but such a feeling of dread, gathering heavy around the idea of those friends. There was no immediate threat, the plans were measured in years; but they could be stopped completely if the man got out of town now. Gunn wondered what he and Wesley would have made of the vision if Angel hadn’t been in a state afterwards to explain it. A warning about an attack on the diner, maybe?</p>
<p>Gunn had the best Spanish of the three of them, and he went into the diner on his own while Wesley and Angel waited around the corner in the car. He told the young man - whose name he never learned - that he had a friend who was psychic, and this friend had just got a really strong message. Yeah, it was crazy, but look, Gunn had found him in the diner just like the message said, and if he really did have a sister in Carlsbad, maybe he should take it that the message was right about everything. No, the message hadn’t said anything about what the new friends were planning, what the friends really were.</p>
<p>The man insisted on seeing this psychic friend, which they’d expected, and he wouldn’t come out to the car. The man’s booth was full in the sun, so Wesley and Angel took a booth on the other side of the room, and Gunn brought the man over. Angel just told the man in English the same as Gunn had told him, but he told it like a psychic, like someone half in this world and half in another, and with nowhere near enough interest in this world to find any reason to lie about a message. Not a performance: just Angel dealing with a stranger (and this was him at his best, and with Wesley and Gunn at hand to steady him). The man said he’d think about it, that he had been wondering… He didn’t say what he’d been wondering, but it looked like he’d already had some doubts about the new friends. Gunn walked him back to his booth, and then they left him to think.</p>
<p>No clues there about the vision of the vampires, why it’d had that effect on Angel. Gunn couldn’t see anyone managing to get stuck in a nightmare about a vague feeling of doom and the picture of a man sitting quietly in a diner, so there was no point in comparing. But Gunn had been thinking about that vision a lot, and he’d started to wonder if Angel getting stuck was a message in itself: meant to be a sign to them about Angel and the visions, that something was about to change. Well… could it be a sign that all visions were going to be errands from now on, that they’d been taken off the real missions? God, Gunn hoped not. Yeah, some of the missions were tough, but he and Wesley could handle all that action and more. And Gunn needed his chance to fight back. He wasn’t living on the streets any more but they were still his streets. Anything trying to move in on those streets, he needed to be right there, the first to teach it that poor and young didn’t mean helpless.</p>
<p>Gunn set himself to wait for the next vision, didn’t expect to get any further before then with thinking about Angel and signs. The next vision was eight days later but by then Gunn pretty much knew why Angel had got stuck in that vision: not a sign, not a message; just something that Angel was likely to do now, because Angel was suddenly starting to get worse.</p>
<p>Gunn had always been surprised and impressed by the way Angel kept his focus during the training. Outside of the training (or the visions), Gunn had never seen him stay focused for more than half an hour. He’d come out of his room, join in a normal conversation, and then gradually drift away, lose his connection with them - maybe his connection with the whole idea of having a conversation - and go back to his room. Sometimes he’d be out again within a couple of hours, sometimes not until the next day; sometimes, probably, he recovered in a couple of hours and just didn’t feel like talking to them until the next day. But during the training they had always been able to rely on him to stay in focus for at least an hour, and there would be two or three sessions a week when he could last up to two hours.</p>
<p>In the week after the errand, there were two sessions where Angel lost his focus after much less than an hour, and only one session where he lasted two hours. That was enough of a change to be clear as a warning, but during the shortest session Angel also lost focus in a way Gunn hadn’t seen before – and with that it looked like they were dealing with a whole new kind of damage. They were in the middle of acting out a raid on a house when Angel lost focus in this new way; they’d acted out a lot of raids since the mission of the vampires and their nest, because Wesley and Gunn could both give too many examples of what those vampires should have done, if they’d had any brains, or any practice at facing humans who fought back. For this particular raid Wesley and Angel were playing the vampires, with the pile of their jackets and coats standing in for one of the kids in chains. Gunn burst in, saw Angel was closest to the pile and tackled him first, and then surprised all three of them by managing to throw Angel against Wesley so he and Wesley both went down. Gunn grabbed his practice-stake from his holster, leapt forward and put his chalk-mark right over Angel’s heart.</p>
<p>But Angel didn’t roll to the side like they were supposed to once they’d been dusted. Instead, he kicked out, and with Wesley pinned under him, the kick hurt Wesley’s thighs at least as much as it hurt Gunn’s – enough to make Wesley yelp, anyway. Gunn picked himself up and took a second stake from the holster. “Oh, come on, Angel, I got you right in the heart. Or you sayin’ we could be up against a nest where they’ve all started wearin’ vampire Kevlar?”</p>
<p>Angel didn’t seem to be listening to Gunn. He was crouched now by Wesley’s side, helping Wesley get to his feet and talking to Wesley, too low for Gunn to hear. And all the while he was scanning the room, gaze returning to the same points over and over, like he was keeping track of another four vampire-hunters, all worse than Gunn.</p>
<p>“Angel! Angel, there’s only Charles. What playing-field? Do you think we’re in Sunnydale?”</p>
<p>“No. No, Willow’s safe. I saw her. She’ll find Giles.”</p>
<p>“Angel!” Wesley was shouting now. “We’re not in Sunnydale. Look at me.” Angel was still scanning, stepping slowly backwards, right arm held out to guide or protect Wesley. Wesley hauled on the arm, trying to get Angel to turn. “Angel, look at me!”</p>
<p>“Buffy, this isn’t -” Angel had given Wesley a split-second’s glance, then fixed his gaze back on Gunn. “Later. I swear they’re safe.”</p>
<p>Wesley had pulled himself around to stand directly in front of Angel. His voice was calmer now. “Angel, can you look at me? Hear me. Buffy isn’t here. You’re not in Sunnydale. You’re in L.A. We’re training. This isn’t a real fight. You need to… see me.” Gunn wanted to move so he could see Angel’s face, but maybe this blocking was exactly what Angel needed to snap out.</p>
<p>“No, they’re not -” Angel was still urgent, had his left hand now on Wesley’s shoulder, pushing him to the side. And then he broke off and his hand fell slowly away, and a few seconds later Wesley had to take a jump backwards as Angel slumped heavily to his knees.</p>
<p>Gunn finally broke the silence. “Can I come over? Or’s he gonna think I’m a whole horde of vampires?”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed. “Your guess is as good as mine. But he’s not thinking anything right now.”</p>
<p>Gunn moved carefully a few steps to the side, saw that Angel was sitting back on his heels with his head hanging forward, one hand palm-up in his lap, the other on the floor. Gunn crouched down but couldn’t see if Angel’s eyes were open or closed, so he shrugged, stood up, and walked slowly over to stop at the same distance as Wesley.</p>
<p>“Who’s this ‘Buffy’?” They were both watching Angel, alert for any change. Wesley was right: Angel wasn’t thinking anything. Not hearing anything.</p>
<p>“His girlfriend in Sunnydale. She was in school with Cordelia.”</p>
<p>“Oh! The blonde. Is that - Was that how she died, or something? They were attacked by vampires? God, she couldn’t’ve known he was a vampire.”</p>
<p>“She’s not dead. I don’t know what fight he was remembering. It could have been one of hundreds. She was someone with a mission, too.”</p>
<p>“She still in Sunnydale?”</p>
<p>“As far as I know.”</p>
<p>“She know about him bein’ a vampire?”</p>
<p>“Yes, she did.”</p>
<p>“Damn! Now you’re gonna tell me that Cordy knew, too.”</p>
<p>“You know I am.”</p>
<p>“Would it be quicker to ask who up there didn’t know?”</p>
<p>Wesley laughed. “There were about ten, I suppose. Ten who knew. It surprised me too when I got there. How much they all seemed to take for granted.” Wesley’s voice changed, became harder. “Don’t mention Buffy to him. Nothing about Sunnydale. He doesn’t talk about it.”</p>
<p>Jeez, worse than what happened with Doyle? “Bad break-up?”</p>
<p>“Many things went badly wrong.” Gunn looked over at Wesley and saw that his face was even grimmer than his voice.</p>
<p>“OK. So what’s your guess for how long he’ll be like this? Should we try to get him home?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. I’m reluctant to touch him. Falling on me seemed to be what triggered the memories. The hallucination. I don’t want to trigger another trying to get him home.”</p>
<p>“You OK? Sorry, he fell on you pretty hard.”</p>
<p>“I’ll have some bruises. Nothing’s broken.” Wesley smiled. “It was a good move.”</p>
<p>Gunn smiled back. “Wasn’t bad. Look, let’s wait till the hour’s up. See how we feel then about movin’ him.”</p>
<p>They settled in to wait, sitting against the wall opposite Angel. They were getting good at waiting together, were now comfortable with any length of silence. They started off this wait, though, by talking about tactics and equipment for house-raids, and had been talking quietly for about five minutes when Angel slowly raised his right hand to drag it back through his hair, lifted his head, blinked at them as they were standing up, and then finally got to his feet.</p>
<p>“We’ll do one of the raids - Wesley and me against Charles - then the sword-work and hand-to-hand. And if we have time, I want to get Wes some practice with a moving target.”</p>
<p>“Angel.” Wesley had come to within a few feet of Angel. He sounded curious rather than concerned. “What’s the last thing you remember?”</p>
<p>“The last thing I remember? What do you mean? We’re training. We drove over here.”</p>
<p>“So… the last thing you remember is the drive over?”</p>
<p>Angel shrugged. “I think I remember it. Were you talking about that school? But that’s not why you’re asking. What’s happened?”</p>
<p>Wesley explained, not mentioning Buffy or Sunnydale, just saying that Angel seemed to be having a hallucination of a fight he must have had in the past. His way of describing how the hallucination had ended was to say that Angel had “shut down” - not passed out, he’d still been conscious on some level.</p>
<p>“You were like that for about ten minutes and now you’ve just pulled out of it.”</p>
<p>Angel was shaking his head, looking confused and worried. “I haven’t done this before?”</p>
<p>“Not that we’ve seen.”</p>
<p>“It - Couldn’t it have been a vision? I don’t always remember those afterwards. Do I?”</p>
<p>“It wasn’t a vision. Was it?” Wesley had turned to Gunn for confirmation.</p>
<p>“No, man. Nothin’ like a vision.”</p>
<p>Angel swallowed and looked at the ground. “I’m getting worse.”</p>
<p>“It’s too early to say. Maybe it’s a reaction to all the changes in the last month. Getting used to the new types of cases we’re working on. We’ll see what happens when things have settled down.”</p>
<p>Angel looked up at Gunn, giving a lopsided half-smile. “That’s how I know I’m getting worse. When Wes has his list ready of things that are going to ‘settle down’.”</p>
<p>Gunn didn’t know what to say to that. Yeah, it looked to him like Angel had already got used to the new cases. But he wasn’t ready, no more probably than Wesley, to take on the idea of Angel getting worse. Not right now. Not here. Anything he said now was gonna be the wrong thing. He and Wes needed to act the same on this, they needed to be working together – so it’d be best to stall Angel till they’d got home and done some serious talking.</p>
<p>Looking at Angel, you couldn’t guess that his mind was breaking down. Or Gunn couldn’t, he couldn’t begin to imagine what Angel must be going through. How much would you think about it, wonder about the times when you weren’t yourself, you were something that had to be locked away for safety? Wonder how much longer you’d even understand what was happening? Though maybe Angel wouldn’t think anything, wouldn’t wonder anything, not on his own. If Wesley didn’t tell Angel that he’d been lost for a day, or ask him the last thing he remembered, then maybe he wouldn’t know. Seeing how he’d come round like that, gone straight in to planning the raid… He’d probably just jump from one clear moment to the next, and he wouldn’t know if the moment was an hour long or just five minutes, he wouldn’t know if the gap was two hours or two days. Gunn didn’t know if he’d want Wesley to tell him. If it was him instead of Angel. He might want Wesley to lie.</p>
<p>“Wes just doesn’t like to jump to conclusions. You know how he always starts out with three different translations. Likes to have three different references.”</p>
<p>Angel said to Wesley, “What are we waiting for, then? Two more hallucinations? Or one hallucination and another vision I don’t pull out of?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. But we are waiting.”</p>
<p>Gunn said, “Are we gonna train? It’s still early.”</p>
<p>Wesley and Angel checked with one another, then Wesley said slowly, “I don’t know. I’d rather Angel didn’t fight any more tonight. Whatever triggered the hallucination might still be close to the surface. But will you coach Charles and me, if we train?”</p>
<p>They couldn’t do the raid properly with just two, so they did twenty minutes of swordplay and ten of hand-to-hand; and after that Angel had reached his limit so they took him home.</p>
<p>In bed that night, Gunn told Wesley what he’d been thinking about Angel. How, left on his own, Angel probably wouldn’t understand enough to worry about getting worse.</p>
<p>“I know. I think that every time. But when he first started getting lost. Having gaps between his lucid periods. Well, back then we couldn’t avoid talking about it. We had no idea what to expect. And whenever we’ve talked he’s insisted that he wants to know. That he doesn’t want to hide from what’s happening. And he wants to helps us work out what to do.”</p>
<p>“If he does that again tomorrow, are we gonna keep on trying to train with him?”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “He can coach us.”</p>
<p>“We’re gonna need more than half an hour each time. And we’re gonna need someone else to fight. More than one, to make as good a fight as Angel.”</p>
<p>A sigh. “Let’s wait and see.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Angel didn’t have any more hallucinations before the next vision, or even the vision after that, but over that time his lucid periods got steadily shorter. Angel kept asking if he’d had another hallucination, if he’d done anything else, and on the 20<sup>th</sup> of December they had to tell him that he’d got trapped in a vision for nearly a full day. They also had to tell him that they hadn’t been able to make any sense of his drawings or of what he’d said or of the frantic way he kept touching his face, and his arms and legs. The drawings just showed people lying asleep, maybe in hospital, and when Angel saw them he couldn’t suggest anything except checking hospitals, which Gunn and Wesley had already done.</p>
<p>The three of them had Christmas dinner together. Or, at least, they had dessert and a drink together when Angel came out of his room late in the afternoon, long after Wesley and Gunn had finished their main meal. Wesley got Angel a sweater and Gunn got him a stack of glossy magazines (as a joke) and a couple of books that Wesley had suggested. As Gunn expected, Angel’s first reaction on seeing the gifts wasn’t pleasure but guilt that he hadn’t bought them anything. Gunn did better than Wesley at shrugging the guilt away. “Nah, you can owe us. You think you’ll sneak out and go late-night shopping, or do it all on Amazon?”</p>
<p>Gunn’s main gift to Wesley was a couple of bottles of fancy strong wines. Very English, Wes said the wines were, and the only sweet thing he’d ever mentioned getting a craving for, maybe twice a month he’d get it, at about eleven at night, when one small glass seemed to be exactly what the day needed. Gunn had thought about getting Wesley something to wear: more, something that he would always wear, that would be against his skin all day, on his hand, or against his throat. But he couldn’t afford anything that would be good enough, or really imagine how he’d make it seem natural, giving jewellery to Wesley. Maybe next year, when he’d had more chance to find out if Wes would really be glad to get jewellery, not just wear it to be polite.</p>
<p>Wesley got Gunn a joystick and the latest Tomb Raider game, which showed Gunn that Wesley must have been keeping close track of which games sites Gunn was visiting, because Gunn was sure he’d never said a word about the game to Wesley. Gunn played for most of the evening while Wesley read and listened to music, and then they shared a glass of Wesley’s Madeira. The wine wasn’t really Gunn’s idea of sweet, but he loved the taste of it from Wesley’s mouth.</p>
<p>Two days after Christmas, Angel had a vision that brought out Angelus. The vision hit near midnight, and Angel was in his room. They hadn’t practised with the chains and gag since that first week after the Hollywood-and-Wilcox vision, but Wesley and Gunn knew each other’s strengths and signals so much better now; they had Angelus in the chains before his sounds became human enough to be recognisable as words.</p>
<p>Another terrified “she”, an address near Caritas. Something was waiting for her, something that could never see her as anything but food. And what food. Such a store of flesh, the sweet, the salt, the bitter. Bones to chew, the meats to swallow, and the hot, rich juices. A feast. A feast to last for hours, satisfy for days.</p>
<p>They had to wait and listen to every word, couldn’t tighten the gag until they knew that the vision was over and Angelus wouldn’t tell them anything more. Gunn was brutal with the gag, and he knew it and couldn’t feel anything like guilt; not just bruising but blood, as Angelus fought and Gunn didn’t care that the vampire was inevitably going to lose, didn’t care how often or how hard lips or tongue got trapped, got forced against the sharp teeth. He’d had to listen - knowing he couldn’t kill – so now he was taking that hungry mouth and he was making it feel.</p>
<p>Once Angelus was gagged they used crosses and holy water to drive him back against the bed, and then they tightened the chain that was fastened to the frame and held Angelus by his neck and wrists and ankles. They left enough slack to give him about six inches of movement as he lay on the floor: enough for comfort, Angel had said, but not nearly enough to give Angelus any options for escape. The gag worked like it was supposed to: they could hear the sounds of rage in the living room, but not in the hallway or out in the street.</p>
<p>The demon had dragged the poor girl up the side of the building. They’d heard the screams - weak, muffled - followed them to the alley, then seen the trail of blood up the wall. Just in time. Just barely in time. Gunn climbed up the wall first, since his two hands meant that he had to be quicker than Wesley. When he got through the window, he saw the girl, and she was lying on her side at the far side of the room. He ran towards her at the same time as he was reaching for the sword strapped to his back, but then the demon jumped him and threw him, and grabbed him and bit him. His arms were held fast and he couldn’t get his feet under him, and he was yelling at the girl to run, get out. And then Wesley was there and the demon had a spike through the top of its head. The girl hadn’t run, had gone for Gunn’s sword instead, though she could barely hold it up with the wound in her side.</p>
<p>They went down the stairs and Wesley broke through the padlocked door then drove them to the hospital. The girl was seen immediately then taken away; sounded like she’d be in for the night, at least. Gunn’s bites were going to need stitches but they didn’t need them urgently, so Gunn and Wesley settled in for more of their waiting.</p>
<p>When Wesley came back with his second set of magazines, Gunn said, “I wanted to kill him. Angelus. When he was - When he was talking like that. About how good the girl would… taste. I could feel the axe in my hands. Wanted to take his head off.” Wesley just nodded, like Gunn was talking about something harmless, about changing the colours on their website; not about wanting to kill their roommate. “So, you ever felt like that?”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “It’s just words. Yes, they’re terrible words, but they’re not the same as actions. I might despise someone because of his words, want to avoid him. But to want to… do something in return. Something that can’t be taken back. That has to be about what he’s doing. Or about what he’s - About his failures.”</p>
<p>“So you’ve never seen him when he’s like that and thought, ‘He’s evil. Solid through. The world shouldn’t have any place for him.’ It’s not natural that - That he’s not dead. Wanting to kill him, that feels natural.”</p>
<p>“You’re not -” A sudden look of concern. “Do you need me to stop you doing it? You have to be kept away from Angelus? From Angel, even?”</p>
<p>“No, I can –” Gunn sighed and shook his head. “I just - How can you not feel anything?”</p>
<p>“You’re assuming…” A long, frowning silence, then: “I can’t get angry with him. I can’t get angry. For hundreds of reasons. So there are some things I don’t feel.”</p>
<p>“You feel sorry for him.” And Gunn couldn’t feel more than mild exasperation.</p>
<p>“That’s - A small part of it. It should get easier for you. I think. You’ll tell me if it doesn’t?”</p>
<p>As they expected, Angel had not turned back by the time they got home. If he’d been quiet they might have opened his door to check, but they were barely inside the apartment when they realised Angelus was still there.</p>
<p>In the morning, however, they did have to check. Gunn stood ready with cross and holy water, and Wesley unlocked the door and pushed it wide open. There was a grinding of chains, a grunt or a gasp; and the sounds were coming from the right place, by the floor on the far side of the bed, so Angelus hadn’t got loose during the night. Wesley took the holy water from Gunn and stepped into the room, and Gunn followed.</p>
<p>Angel was struggling, at the limit of his movement; Gunn could just see his bound feet, trying to gain purchase on the floor. And he was making more of those sharp sounds deep in his throat. Trying to get to his feet, tell Wesley to hurry up? Wesley rounded the foot of the bed, stopped abruptly and then flinched back.</p>
<p>“God, is he still -” Gunn sprang forward, cross held up to control Angelus and protect Wesley - and Angel made a choked sound of pure terror, and struggled against the chains in helpless panic, desperate to get away from Gunn. Gunn quickly moved back to behind Wesley, but Angel’s panic seemed beyond reach. “Oh, God.” A whisper. “He shouldn’t - He should just be…” Angel should just be a bit shaken, kind of guilty and ashamed. Nothing like this.</p>
<p>“I - I - We have to get him out.” Wesley dropped the holy water on the bed and crouched down with his hand held out; he moved slowly forward on his knees, murmuring reassurance, like he was trying to give help to a wounded animal. Angel’s noises did get quieter, but no-one who could see his eyes would think the change meant that Wesley had managed to gain his trust. No, he was quiet because he was frozen in place, bracing himself for something unimaginable. Or could he imagine it all too clearly? Gunn couldn’t tell, not from the expression in Angel’s eyes, but when Wesley reached out for his face, Angel closed his eyes so fast. Turned his head away so hard. Looked to Gunn like he knew, exactly. In Angel’s mind, Wesley was the thing that made him live his nightmares.</p>
<p>Wesley loosened the buckle on the gag, talking all the while in the same gentle tone. There was blood on the leather, and at the corner of Angel’s mouth and on his chin. And bruising, all along the side of his face. Wesley fell silent, leant over to ease his hand under Angel’s head and slide the gag out from under, then sat back on his heels and didn’t move for a long time. Gunn wanted to say he was sorry, for the blood and the bruises, but this wasn’t the right time to say anything.</p>
<p>Angel gradually got calmer, or maybe he was just exhausted. His eyes were still closed, but he had given up on the fight. No longer trying to brace himself, no longer trying to get away.</p>
<p>Wesley reached into his pocket for his set of keys to the padlocks, then leaned over Angel again and opened the lock at Angel’s neck. Angel flinched violently when Wesley first touched him, trembled for several seconds, then slumped again. Gunn knew that Wesley was going to release Angel’s arms next, and he didn’t make any move to stop him, but he got the holy water from the bed and took up position. Not needed: Angel kept his hands behind his back even when they were free, never looked for a second like he was about to spring up and attack Wesley.</p>
<p>When Wesley was finished he got to his feet, took several steps back, and then stood looking down at Angel, frowning hard, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. Gunn could hear him breathing. After about a minute: “Charles? Could you heat up some blood for him?” Wesley hadn’t taken his eyes off Angel.</p>
<p>“OK.” Gunn headed towards the door. “You’d better have this.” He held the holy water up in front of Wesley, and Wesley took it. “You’ll stay there, right? Not get any closer.”</p>
<p>Angel opened his eyes when Gunn put the beaker of blood down on the floor. The blood was only a few feet away, he must be able to smell it, had probably been able to smell it before Gunn had even brought it into the room. Angel looked at the blood, then at Gunn (starting to tremble), then up at Wesley (starting to inch away). What did he think, that the blood was poisoned? Was it even possible to poison a vampire? What the hell could you do with a beaker of blood that could make a brave man so afraid?</p>
<p>Wesley dropped to his knees. Quietly, gently, but still an order: “Angel. Drink it before it gets cold. Drink it. Sit up and drink it.”</p>
<p>Angel stopped moving, stared at Wesley like he was trying to guess what Wesley was planning. Then he slowly sat up and reached for the beaker, still staring at Wesley, and very slowly lifted it and started to drink. After three or four mouthfuls he closed his eyes, not tight-shut, more… resigned. Waiting. Like he’d decided he couldn’t guess what Wesley was going to do. He couldn’t stop him. Wesley was simply going to happen. He didn’t open his eyes again when he emptied the beaker, but bowed his head and turned his face away, like he was trying to curl around himself.</p>
<p>Wesley stretched out to take the beaker from Angel’s hand then moved back again, taking himself further away, almost to the foot of the bed. Silence, then a long sigh, then: “Charles. I don’t know what to do.”</p>
<p>“Think we have to leave him. Looks like he wants to hide from us. Kindest thing is to let him. But leave the door open. Give him a chance to hear you workin’ and…” Gunn shrugged. “You know, being you. Not whatever he… thinks he needs to hide from. And if the door’s open we won’t need to do the police-search routine whenever we wanna check on him. Can’t have helped. Not like he’s gonna turn nasty and come stormin’ out. Is he?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him. Not like this.” Pained, pleading: “Angel. This isn’t -” A sigh, then Wesley swallowed. “You’re right. We should leave him.”</p>
<p>They went to the kitchen together and Wesley washed the beaker while Gunn started making the coffee. When Wesley had finished Gunn immediately left off and turned to put his hand on Wesley’s shoulder.</p>
<p>“Wes. Wes, how you doing? You know none of that was about you.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded and gave a shaky sigh. “I know. But it’s terrible to see him like that. No matter what it’s about.”</p>
<p>Gunn put his arms around Wesley and held him close, and felt how much Wesley needed to be held. Like their first evening - three months ago - when Angelus had hit Wesley in the mouth. How much would it have taken out of Wesley to deal with this on his own? “You did everything you could. Everything. You know you always do.” Wesley said nothing; became tense for a few seconds, then slowly relaxed and after that Gunn thought he could feel him recovering more quickly with each breath, and was expecting almost to the second the moment when Wesley raised his head.</p>
<p>“We ought to get down to work.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded and released his hold. “Yeah, we got deadlines. Think I should cancel my meetings for this afternoon, though. Not right to leave you alone with him.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked thoughtful, then shook his head. “No, don’t change anything. I can call you.”</p>
<p>They worked together on research in the morning, and after lunch Gunn left for an afternoon of meetings and legwork. At about four, when he was well clear of the meetings, Wesley called and asked if Gunn would mind staying home from Caritas that evening.</p>
<p>“God, hadn’t thought about that. Thursday evening. Sure. He’s not gotten any better?”</p>
<p>“I think he’s still curled up in the gap by the wardrobe. I haven’t looked since you left. He’s not… It’s more that it’s one of those days when I really need to cook a curry. As if it was a Friday night. And it’s not the same without you there to help eat it.”</p>
<p>Wesley needed to go to the store and really didn’t want to leave Angel alone, so they arranged the time for Gunn to come back and take over. Gunn called Matt, who turned out to be still visiting with family in Palm Springs. Grouw and Piriti would still be at Caritas, though; Matt had talked to Grouw the night before, and they’d been joking about choosing the duet. Grouw turned his phone off while he was at work, so Gunn left a message.</p>
<p>Gunn took a look in Angel’s room while Wesley was out, and Angel was still hiding in the corner between the bed and the wardrobe. Maybe he was asleep? No, if he was asleep he would be completely still. The movement of his back had to be a slow trembling, not breathing. Wesley asked, when he got back, if Gunn had checked on Angel, and then they didn’t talk about Angel again until long after they’d eaten, when Gunn had come back to the couch with their third beers.</p>
<p>“I think now that I will not argue with him the next time he suggests that he’s getting worse.”</p>
<p>Gunn had to laugh; Wes could surprise him every time with the way he put things. “Nah, bet he recovered hours ago. He’s just goin’ on with this in case we missed his point.” That got a smile from Wesley but there wasn’t much else to smile about. “We don’t have to guess what triggered this one, do we? It was the chains. Did you know he’d been chained up and tortured for real? He has, hasn’t he? Must’ve been why he got trapped in that first vision, too. With the three kids.”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged, then nodded. “Probably. Yes, I knew. That was one of the reasons I was uncomfortable at first about the idea of taking him to the drive-in. But when his main reaction seemed to be to want to use his experience to help us deal with Angelus…” Another shrug. “I didn’t think he’d forgotten what it was like. But I thought it must be true what I’d heard, that he’d… recovered quite quickly. I can’t imagine now how anyone could recover, if it was like that.”</p>
<p>“You want to go back to using the net?”</p>
<p>“Oh! What I want…” Wesley sighed. “You know what he’ll say when he’s in a state to be asked. That there’s nothing more important than keeping Angelus under control. He’ll probably say it’s even more important now. Now he’s getting worse. Because something new might be about to happen with Angelus. So we can’t go back to using the net. We’ll just have to get used to this. Assuming he’s always like this afterwards.” Another sigh, then Wesley’s voice lightened slightly. “We will get used to it. You’ll see. You’ll probably be sick to death of curry by then, though.”</p>
<p>That night Gunn was dragged out of a deep sleep to find the main light was on, and Angel was standing in the doorway of their bedroom. Wesley was already awake. He must have been lying against Gunn’s back, but now he was pushing himself up, talking to Angel in a voice still thick with sleep. Gunn became instantly alert, started to sit up, ask what was wrong.</p>
<p>“There’s nothing wrong, Charles. You should go back to sleep. I think Angel just needed to see our room.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” Angel was looking around like he’d never seen the room before, maybe never seen a bedroom, even. He seemed puzzled by the two of them, as well, and also by the living room. The main light was on in the living room, and he kept turning his head and checking. That it was still there? “Why?”</p>
<p>Mild, and now fully awake: “What are you looking for, Angel?”</p>
<p>“You have someone.”</p>
<p>“Yes. His name is Charles. You usually know him.”</p>
<p>Angel seemed to believe Wesley, became immediately much less puzzled, or at least less troubled. “Is he the reason we moved? Have we moved… with him?”</p>
<p>“We haven’t moved. Not since December when we moved out of the office and moved in here. And that was long before we met Charles. You sound as if you don’t recognise this apartment. Is that right?”</p>
<p>Angel sighed, and dragged his hand back over his hair. “I don’t know. Have I been here all the time? I thought I… We were somewhere else. Somewhere far. For… for a long time. Much longer than we’ve been here. I was… I was there. And this seems… I don’t know myself here.”</p>
<p>“Well, you’ve been here all the time. Over six months. But you had a very difficult vision yesterday. And then a hallucination. So you could say that you were somewhere else. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you felt as if you were there for years.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded slowly. “What was the vision? I don’t remember.”</p>
<p>“Why don’t you go back to your room, and I’ll come through in a minute and tell you about it. If we talk here we’ll stop Charles from getting his sleep, and he already knows about the vision.”</p>
<p>Wesley was away for nearly an hour. Gunn dozed, on and off, had many small, strange dreams about Angel being in their room, Wesley and Angel in Angel’s room, sitting on the floor in the space between the bed and the wardrobe. Every time he woke, he seemed to go through the exact same process of realising where the dreams had come from. He was awake when Wesley returned, couldn’t possibly sleep once Wesley and Angel had started laughing.</p>
<p>“So where was he? Couldn’t’ve been all bad, way you were laughin’.”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed. “He was back in hell, which is what I thought. He doesn’t remember directly, of course, but when I told him how he’d reacted, he said he must have thought he was back in hell. So he would have thought we were the pair of demons guarding him. They all tortured him sometimes. In different ways.”</p>
<p>Gunn stared at Wesley for about five seconds. “You really mean ‘hell’? Not just a way of speaking? He was in hell? Actual hell? With pitchforks and…”</p>
<p>“Probably not that that hell. But, yes, I mean it. He was held in one of the demon dimensions. Not quite one of the prison dimensions like the dimension where Grouw’s sister works. But close enough. Probably worse.”</p>
<p>“What did he - How did he get sent there?”</p>
<p>“He opened a gateway to it. And got sucked in.”</p>
<p>“Because of a vision? You got him out?”</p>
<p>“No. This was in Sunnydale. Before the visions. Before I met him. He was… brought back eventually.”</p>
<p>“Sunnydale. Oh. How long was he there?” Well, that would be a reason for keeping off the subject of Sunnydale.</p>
<p>“A few months in our time. But time passes differently in most of those dimensions. At least for the prisoners. For him, it was a hundred years or more.”</p>
<p>“A hundred years? A hundred years of being chained up like that? Tortured by demons?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded.</p>
<p>“Fuck! No wonder he was - If he thought he was back there.”</p>
<p>“I’m wondering if he thought he’d never left. Even when he’s relatively lucid… Talking to him just now it was obvious that his grasp of time is getting worse and worse, his grasp of things happening in a sequence. He kept on talking about the feeling that he’d just come back from a long time somewhere else. I think that was like an aftertaste from a dream. A weight in his mind. Or maybe a shape where the weight used to be. Still pulling at him, even when he’s lucid.” Wesley was shaking his head. “And the Angel we found in there this morning… I don’t think he has any grasp of time. I don’t think he understands anything except being afraid. He’s walled up in some closed section of our Angel’s mind. Completely closed.”</p>
<p>“Did you ask him about whether we should use the chains again?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “He said we have to use them. And he said we had done everything we could afterwards. From what I told him. There was nothing his guards could have done to make him trust them. It was kindest to let him hide. Maybe take the chain off the bed before we left him. Clear everything away. He’d be frightened to see us handling the chain, but it would be easier afterwards.”</p>
<p>“OK. I’ll - I’ll find out how to go easier with the gag, too. I made a mess of him.”</p>
<p>“He’s healed now. He doesn’t even know.”</p>
<p>“God. Never thought I’d want to have someone hold a grudge against me.” Seemed much longer than one day, since he’d been wanting to kill Angelus. “What were you two laughing about?”</p>
<p>“Um… Some things that happened back in the old building. Arguments we had, mostly. And then we were talking about books. He was looking for something to read. We talked about books we were ashamed to admit we liked. Books we wouldn’t read in public. But I throw those away once I’ve read them, so I gave him ‘The Loved One’ and a collection of Wodehouse stories about Hollywood. And told him about my ideas for a Literary Tour of L.A. Which currently is too obviously simply an excuse to quote at length from my favourite English humorists.”</p>
<p>“Sounds like you got him almost back to normal by the end. Did he say whether we did the right thing leaving his door open? We gonna have to get used to him wandering in here every time? Good thing we were just sleeping.”</p>
<p>“I’ll ask him. We can always lock our door. But… I don’t know what he’d have done tonight if he’d found the door locked.”</p>
<p>It was always about Angel. Of course it was. And of course when Wesley did ask, Angel wouldn’t even remember that he’d barged in on them. “Guess he’d’ve knocked. Vampire senses. He’d’ve known we were in here by hearing us breathing.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>When the year 2000 ended and 2001 began, Wesley and Gunn were fully absorbed in giving Gunn a slow, serious, silent fuck. They had decided not to join in any of the looking back or looking forward. 2001 was obviously going to be difficult where Angel was concerned, but then 2000 had been brutal to both of them in different ways. Still, here they’d found each other and they were so good together. Didn’t need saying, and they’d agreed to spend the night saying nothing.</p>
<p>In the first week in January, Angel had another hallucination during training, thought he was back in some other fight, and two days later, on the Saturday, Angel went through the entire day without knowing who Gunn was, not even during their training session. He seemed only slightly puzzled by Gunn’s presence, paid little attention to Gunn himself, but watched carefully whenever Wesley spoke to Gunn. Three times that day, after about ten minutes of watching, he said to Gunn, “I should know you. Shouldn’t I?” and each time Gunn said, “Yeah, we’ve met before. But there’s no real reason you’d remember.” At this rate, Angel would be useless for training by the end of the month.</p>
<p>On the Wednesday evening of the following week, Wesley was working late on a translation while Gunn was trying yet another search idea for finding a clue to that “hospital” vision. Gunn was nearly as alert as Wesley now to sudden noises from Angel, so when the agonised cry came from behind the closed door, they were both on their feet in the same instant. Wesley ran straight into Angel’s room while Gunn went to get the chains, but called out after a few second that Angel hadn’t changed, they didn’t need the chains. Gunn dumped the chains outside the door and went to stand next to Wesley and see what Angel was drawing.</p>
<p>“Hey, that looks just like - And he’s saying Vernon and La Salle. That’s where the nest was. Jeez, how many of that nest did we miss? And looks almost like they’ve snatched the same kids.”</p>
<p>Wesley was nodding. “I hope the rest of the nest haven’t taught themselves even more from that raid than we have. Taking the same kids… That feels to me like a deliberate rematch. We’re going to need a lot more than surprise this time.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Only plus is, now we know the layout. They can’t’ve changed that.”</p>
<p>Angel’s drawing became slower, then stopped. Gunn leaned forward and took the pad from his hands. “It does look like the same kids. What was the one with the blood all over his eye? Jed?”</p>
<p>“Jed, yes. And that might be more than a rematch, it might be part of the sadism. To take them again. From what we know -” Wesley broke off because Angel had suddenly stood up and started to urge them towards the door.</p>
<p>“Vernon and La Salle. There’s a nest of six vampires. They’ve got three kids chained up in separate rooms. We’ll go in with the crossbows, clear what we can. Then you two get the kids out while I deal with the rest.”</p>
<p>They collected the weapons-chest and were out of the apartment in a minute. They might not have the advantage of surprise but they had Angel, and that made the odds look much better. On the drive over, Wesley told Angel that this looked like the remains of the nest from their mission at the beginning of December, and Gunn described the layout of the house.</p>
<p>The house was empty, the door still broken and open from their first raid. From the look and smell, it hadn’t been empty for all of those weeks, but it was empty tonight. Angel insisted it was the right house, went to each of the rooms where they’d found the kids, reacting to each room with horror and recognition.</p>
<p>“Angel…” Wesley’s voice was uncertain, almost wary. “Is it possible that it wasn’t really a vision? Maybe that’s why you got stuck in it the first time? Because something went wrong when they were sending it? We know strange things happen sometimes.”</p>
<p>Angel shook his head hard. “It was a vision. We must be too early. They haven’t come back yet. Or maybe they’re out now, taking those kids.”</p>
<p>Gunn got his phone. “Then we’ll make sure we find ‘em first.” He called Anne and asked about the three kids. They’d hardly set foot outside the shelter since they were rescued, and they were all there tonight. “Can we come over and see them? Shouldn’t need more than a minute. Friend needs to check they’re OK. M’friend Angel, y’know?”</p>
<p>Anne was waiting for them. The kids were watching TV, but she’d already spoken to them and on her signal they headed straight up to her office. Gunn didn’t know if she’d arranged the privacy for the kids’ benefit or because of what she’d heard of Angel, but it was a good call. Angel seemed freaked out by the shelter, the closest Gunn had seen to how he’d been in the thrift shop. Keeping his gaze straight ahead or on Wesley, refusing to look at people he didn’t know unless he understood exactly what business he had with them. Gunn bet that everyone in the shelter who saw him was thinking “cop with the worst kind of attitude”. Except for Anne and the three kids, who were thinking “brain damage”.</p>
<p>Angel recognised the kids immediately, started to lecture them on keeping safe, staying off the streets until… He trailed off quickly, looking so confused that Gunn thought he might be about to shut down like he did after a hallucination, not just do his usual drifting away.</p>
<p>“Angel! I think I know how we can answer this.” Wesley had got at least some of Angel’s attention back. “If Anne can find some paper and a pencil, can you draw any of the vampires? Did you see enough of them? If we recognise them as the ones we killed in December, then we’ll know that there’s been a mistake and that the danger is over.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded, and Anne showed him to her desk and pointed out the pad and pencils. While he was drawing, the Jed kid came over to Gunn and said, “Heard you used to be with the guys who do the self-defence here.” The tone was friendly, maybe even admiring.</p>
<p>“Yeah. Left a few months back.” With a lopsided smile, like he was making a simple joke: “Why? Anne have to warn you not to say you’d met me?”</p>
<p>Jed laughed, no edge to the sound at all. “Everyone’s heard how we got here. Who we owe. So we were swapping vampire stories at the first class and Rondell…” Another laugh. “He said George had just lost the bet on how quick you’d lose your touch. Big money!”</p>
<p>“Yeah, that’s George.”</p>
<p>At the sound of tearing paper they both turned to see Angel passing the sheet to Wesley, and Wesley already nodding. “This is the sire.” Wesley held the picture up to Gunn and Jed, and then to the other two kids. “Isn’t it?” They all agreed that it was, and Wesley, Gunn and Toni told Angel that they’d seen that vampire die. Wesley said there was no revivication that could work with ashes. The vision was a mistake. Or it was supposed to be telling them something else entirely. For tonight, anyway, they could all sleep soundly.</p>
<p>“Apart from a few nightmares about tomorrow’s fundraiser. Good thing you did this tonight, eh?”</p>
<p>“That’s tomorrow? Hey!” Gunn was excited for Anne and for the shelter, and surprised to realise how long it had been since they’d last really spoken. “Don’t need to have nightmares. What could go wrong?”</p>
<p>“Let’s see… What about my dress? Or my speech? Or no one showing?”</p>
<p>“Never gonna be a problem. Not with you. And not with your mega-lawyers. Call you at the weekend, OK, and you can tell me how much I was right.”</p>
<p>When they got home Angel sat down at Wesley’s desk with a drawing pad and wouldn’t stop drawing vampires until all six had been accounted for. He had gone from confused to puzzled back at the shelter, and was now mostly angry.</p>
<p>“It was a vision!”</p>
<p>“I know, Angel. We all saw that. We all heard it. I don’t want to think it was a mistake, either. But if we’re supposed to work out what else it was about…” Wesley shrugged. “I’m not in any state to do it tonight. And I don’t think the message is urgent. Not in that way. Why don’t you have a hot bath and a large glass of scotch - and sleep on it?”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Gunn had been very right about the fundraiser. Anne said she’d even managed to enjoy it. Wolfram and Hart wouldn’t have the real figures for another few weeks, but Lindsey was confident that they’d made her at least two hundred thousand and she was trying very, very hard not to make any plans yet for spending it.</p>
<p>“Were the kids OK after Wednesday night? Sorry we did that to you guys.”</p>
<p>“Looked like you had to. You figure out what was going on?”</p>
<p>“Not yet. Angel keeps at us to work out a clue. Two new clues a day, he’d like.”</p>
<p>“Is he always like that? Like he was on Wednesday?”</p>
<p>“Um… He’s not often that freaked out. But he was freaked out ‘cos he knew where he was and what was happening. So you kind of saw him at his best.”</p>
<p>“Intense.” A pause. “He’s amazing to look at. C’n I say that t’you now? Which shouldn’t make any difference to how terrible it is, but… Does seem like even more’s being lost.”</p>
<p>“I guess. Different if you see him every day. Not ‘lost’ - always know exactly where to find him, drawin’ away in his room, same as ever.”</p>
<p>Angel had a vision a few hours after Gunn spoke to Anne, and this vision was straightforward in practical matters but raised some awkward questions. The vision was of a pair of twins at 8612 Whitworth Drive, about to sacrifice another pair of twins to the demons Chanlir and Chelva. The vision brought out Angelus, but it also kept Angelus stuck inside it. There was no clear end to the reverberation phase and Angelus didn’t turn violent - didn’t notice Wesley or Gunn, didn’t really notice the chains - so they waited and listened, and decided when he hadn’t said the address again for at least a minute that the reverberation phase must be over.</p>
<p>By that stage, Angelus’s voice was dropping to a lazy murmur and there wasn’t any immediate need to gag him - but anything might happen later, and Gunn found a whole new way of being creeped out when Angelus didn’t fight the gag but arched his neck in welcome, and then worked his mouth on the leather with a pleasure that showed itself along the full length of his body. Was this because there was a gag in the vision? Or just the mood the vision had put him in, got his body needing to bite?</p>
<p>They were guessing that the demon-worshipping twins were human, which meant they should be subdued with the net, left with nothing worse than, say, a couple of broken ribs. They guessed right, and they were good enough with the net that the fight was over in seconds - nothing broken, hardly even a bruise. The other twins were shaken but not physically harmed and they just couldn’t decide what they wanted to do about pressing kidnapping charges, so Wesley collected every demon-related artefact in the house and was very convincing as the person who would hear within minutes of the purchase or theft of any item connected with any demon that invited sacrifices. What else could they do? Except trust the Powers to intervene if there was ever a next time.</p>
<p>Angelus was still there when they got home, but they could see at one glance that he’d come out of the vision, he was aware of them. Gunn was surprised that Angelus hadn’t been snarling from the moment they entered the apartment, and then even more surprised when Angelus, seeing them standing at the foot of the bed, didn’t act like he wanted to kill them but like they were all friends. Friends who’d been playing a game, and now he was giving hints that it was time to set him loose: small jerks of his head, shifting his hands, just to remind them where to find the padlocks. And he didn’t doubt for a second that they would set him free; the noises from its throat were: “C’mon, guys. When you’re ready.” Wesley and Gunn looked at one another, speechless, then turned in step and left the room. The noises stayed friendly for two or three minutes (“Nice try, but you know I’m not falling for it.”), and then they suddenly changed to the snarling.</p>
<p>In bed, Gunn said, “So what do we think? Does it mean anything, that he got stuck in the vision? And what kind of game was he playing there?”</p>
<p>“I think… We’ll have to ask Angel when he gets back. About the game, that is. Reading between the lines with the visions… I don’t think we’ve got enough there yet to even make it worth asking. I’ve just realised, though, that I’ve never actually seen him change. He goes into his room in one state. Or we lock him in his room. And by the time the door opens again, he’s changed. But I’ve never been there when it happens.”</p>
<p>“Except the two times he’s shut down. When we were out training. That stopped the hallucinations, got him back to normal. Maybe that’s always how it happens.”</p>
<p>“That would make sense. I don’t think I’ll be checking on Angelus every five minutes, though, just to find out.”</p>
<p>When they opened the door in the morning, they heard sounds that they knew instantly as terror. Angelus was gone, and Angel was in hell.</p>
<p>“Could you heat the blood again?”</p>
<p>Gunn hesitated. “Wes. Sure, I’ll do it but I’m not leavin’ you alone while you take the chains off. I’m gonna watch your back like last time. We don’t know him.”</p>
<p>“No. Of course.”</p>
<p>Angel had said that there was nothing his guards in that hell could have done to make him trust them, and with that, Gunn would just have gone for speed, to get out quickly and leave him alone. He wouldn’t have wasted any effort on trying to reassure Angel, because Angel was going to think the worst of anything they did. But Angel had also said that Gunn and Wesley had done everything they could, and maybe that was what Wesley had heard most clearly: that nothing they’d done was wrong. Wesley knelt down to approach Angel like he had before, talked to him the same as before, made every move so careful, so gentle; and Angel trembled and turned his face away, like he had before.</p>
<p>“Let’s take the chain off the bed now. I’ll take it out of the room when I go to get the blood. Then we can leave him straight after we’ve fed him. Less like jerking him around.”</p>
<p>Wesley agreed, Gunn unlocked the chain, and then they unwound it from the frame. Angel made choked sounds, and each time Gunn looked down at him on the floor, he’d moved another stage towards drawing himself into a protective ball. Again, Wesley had to order him to drink. They decided to leave the door closed but unlocked.</p>
<p>“You OK?” This time Gunn didn’t bother with the coffee but went to stand next to Wesley while he was rinsing the beaker.</p>
<p>Wesley turned to look at him and nodded, serious, but not shaken – not nearly as bad as the first time. “It’s easier when you know what to expect. When you know that all you can do is what you think is right.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded in return. “And you’ve got that down. I mean, being fair to him. When he couldn’t ever notice. Been watching you do that for months.”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “I notice. Have to live with myself as much as him.”</p>
<p>“I know. Loved you for that before I even knew what I was really seeing.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Gunn got back from a long Monday afternoon of legwork to learn that they were being evicted. The neighbours downstairs and in the apartment next to Angel’s room had complained to the apartment manager about the noise, gone as far as threatening to move out, and the apartment manager had paid Wesley a visit. Gunn didn’t think he would have done any better with the guy than Wesley. Kind of awkward that Wesley had told the neighbours the story about looking after a friend’s dog, since he’d had to start off by admitting that he’d lied - even if the new story meant that he hadn’t broken the no-pets clause after all.</p>
<p>In the new story, Angel had epilepsy because of a head injury, and he wasn’t responding well to medication and he also had bad mood-swings, with surges of rage. The apartment manager was sympathetic, in his way; people did get sick, and sick people had to live somewhere. But Wesley admitted that the noise was sometimes bad, that it was getting worse (more frequent, definitely), that there was nothing he could do to control it; and that, if he’d known it was going to get this bad, he’d have thought properly about neighbours and noise when he’d been choosing an apartment. They were going to get a 30-day notice before the end of the week.</p>
<p>“Oh, shit. What he say about a reference?”</p>
<p>“He’d recommend us, apart from the noise. He’d have to tell the truth about the complaints, but he’d do his best for us.”</p>
<p>“Like they’ll hear anything after ‘eviction’. Damn. Would have been worse, though, before Wyndham Gunn.”</p>
<p>“That helps the bank reference. But we’re going to need a lot more than that to look respectable. And I don’t think our card and website are fit reading for humans.”</p>
<p>“Who says we have to rent the apartment from a human?”</p>
<p>Gunn had only been half joking but he wasn’t going to say anything when he could enjoy watching Wesley laughing, and then take credit for Wesley’s new optimistic mood. “I think Lilah Morgan would give me an employment reference. That should be respectable enough for anyone. I’ll ask her when we have our meeting on Wednesday.”</p>
<p>Angel already knew about the eviction, and he was guilty and withdrawn and difficult. He refused to go training on Monday night, saying he thought he was close to having a hallucination - thought he might be having them more often than Wesley realised, maybe every day, while he was in his room. Wesley and Gunn went training on their own, and when they got back they found the gag and some of the chains lying on the floor in the living room. Their bedroom door was wide open and Angel was asleep on top of their bed, fully dressed, sprawled face-down. He’d been going through their clothes: drawers and doors were hanging open, Wesley’s robe was draped over the foot of the bed, and some of his shirts and jackets were on the floor by the window, looking like they’d been thrown there.</p>
<p>“Oh, boy. It’s gonna be a great month. Every day, he’s got a new trick.”</p>
<p>Wesley was slowly hanging his clothes up. “Do you want to start locking our door?”</p>
<p>Gunn picked up a shirt: the white shirt Wesley had been wearing the first time they’d met. “Give him a second chance. Not like it’s deliberate. Even if it was, I guess he’s entitled.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “In his situation – even a fraction of his situation - I’d probably be very drunk right now.”</p>
<p>“Yeah? I’d be out with my friends - I could find any - lookin’ for trouble. Any shape.”</p>
<p>Wesley placed his hand on Gunn’s chest, then slowly slid his hand around Gunn’s back, under his jacket. Almost a whisper: “I would consider it an honour to come and post bail for you. And for up to…” A pause for calculations. “Four of your friends.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed, rested his hands lightly at Wesley’s waist, and said in Wesley’s ear, “You’re actin’ like you’re certain he’s not gonna wake up. Be a first if we were that quiet.”</p>
<p>A long sigh. “You made me forget him.” Wesley tightened his hold, then let go and stepped back. “I’ll wake him up.”</p>
<p>Angel woke quickly, was aggressive for the first few seconds, then simply grouchy and defensive; he stalked back to his room like he’d just discovered they’d lured him out under false pretences. He was nearly as unpleasant in the few minutes they saw of him the next day, but at least he kept out of their bedroom.</p>
<p>The eviction notice arrived on Wednesday, but by the time it arrived Wesley had already had his meeting with Lilah Morgan, and she’d been so helpful and positive that he came back all fired up with the idea of the move as a chance to choose somewhere properly. Gunn didn’t want to burst Wesley’s bubble - looking through the apartment listings would do that soon enough - so he treated the notice like it was good news, and suggested they give it the place of honour on the refrigerator door.</p>
<p>Angel’s mood improved at some point after Wesley got back from the meeting and he was able to join them for training. During the drive over he asked their opinion - quite calmly - about the ways in which he was getting worse, and how the changes were likely to affect them all. He wanted to know how many hours of training he’d been able to give them so far that year, and when they worked it out he insisted they had to find new training partners, should search at the same times as they looked for a new apartment.</p>
<p>Gunn mentioned the eviction to the boys at Caritas the next night, and how Wesley’s sick friend was getting worse, and that he and Wesley were looking for the makings of a good fight - not treating any of it as a big deal. A fact of life that might make it more difficult for him to join them at the club or for the weekend nest-building, but not like some soap-opera crisis or anything, and he could see the lighter side quick as anyone.</p>
<p>They spent most of the weekend (or so it felt) looking for apartments and discussing what they were going to tell potential sparring partners about what they needed out of a training session and why. Did they have to make it clear immediately that the training was not sport for them, that they expected to use it in earnest at least every week? Probably better to say nothing until they’d had at least one session together and discovered if they really had anything to offer one another. Going to be difficult, finding sane people who would take them seriously, and keeping clear of survivalists or vigilantes or whatever else L.A. had to offer in the way of testosterone and paranoia.</p>
<p>Late on Sunday afternoon Angel got a vision while he was in his room. The chains weren’t needed but he got stuck in the vision, and Wesley and Gunn couldn’t make sense of it on their own. The drawings had to be of a movie set: the narrow, cobbled streets, the branched gas-lamps, the terrified woman’s long, full dress, her hat with the bird’s wing. One drawing was just of her face, close up as she screamed with shock, and in the others she was running down the dark, empty street, clearly hampered by her skirts, and unable to stop herself looking back. She fell at least twice, she lost her hat after one of the falls, but she seemed to be widening the distance. In the last drawing she was nearly at the end of the street and you could see that there were people in the next street, a man and two women walking past, just silhouettes with hats, and she had seen them too and was reaching out and calling for help.</p>
<p>Not just a movie set - more like a scene from a movie, since everyone in the drawings was in costume. Was the vision about the whole production, not just about that particular scene? Maybe playing that scene was reviving unquiet spirits. Or something. Angel’s words were all about that scene, about her terror, how the thing she was running from was enjoying her terror, seemed to think she would never get away. So it probably was about the scene. Angel didn’t give any name for the production or the studio or the actors (and neither Gunn nor Wesley recognised the actress in the drawings), but there couldn’t be that many costume dramas filming at that moment – never were many, not in L.A. Finding it should be easy; getting on the set would be another matter.</p>
<p>They could not find the movie. They went out and bought all the trade papers and a stack of gossip magazines, and Wesley read into the night while Gunn did every search he could think of online, took out trial registrations for every “insiders’ database” he could find; and there simply wasn’t any costume drama of the right era filming in L.A. that week. Wesley thought there might be one in Prague - but that was just a comment, not a suggestion about booking a flight.</p>
<p>Could it be a scene from a movie that had already been made? A movie playing at the moment and something was going to happen in the theatre during that scene? Or it was about the actress, so they really had to figure out who she was? They went through the full movie listings and there was nothing, and they went through the papers and magazines again and didn’t see that face or get a reminder of any name. They went to bed and tried to sleep, and then Wesley thought the vision might be about a movie showing on TV that week so they got up and did another hour. They only stopped when they realised that Angel had fallen silent: if he’d recovered then he might be able to give them the answer immediately. He was asleep - stretched out on the floor underneath the window - and they couldn’t wake him up, but they were ready to admit now that they had no idea what they’d do with this TV movie if they found it, and that sleeping was the best thing they could do with the hours before Angel was fully recovered.</p>
<p>They got up at their usual time on Monday morning and Angel came out just as they were about to start work.</p>
<p>“Did I have a vision? I woke up on the floor.”</p>
<p>“Yes, you had a vision. It’s something to do with a film, but we couldn’t work out what film. Or where we’re supposed to be.” Wesley passed the drawings over to Angel.</p>
<p>Angel stared at the first drawing, the close-up, then flicked it aside, letting it fall to the floor, and quickly went through the other drawings in the same way until he was left holding the last sheet. “This was a vision? Last night?” He seemed held still with some kind of shock, no trace of the urgency that Gunn would expect about an unsolved vision.</p>
<p>“At about five o’clock yesterday afternoon. Do you know the film? Are we too late?”</p>
<p>Angel was shaking his head. “It’s not a film. This was Prague. I think it was 1860. I chose her. Druscilla chose the street.” He looked down at the drawing, tore it in two, then watched the pieces fall to the floor. “When… she got close enough to see their faces, she screamed so hard half the lacing was ripped out of her corset.”</p>
<p>“Angelus.” Wesley swallowed hard. “You had a vision about Angelus. Do you - Do you think they’re warning us that he might get loose?”</p>
<p>Gunn said, “Could be there’s something wrong with how we’re chaining him. We need to get quicker? Not even give him those six inches?”</p>
<p>“Do you think it’s as simple as that? Angel?” Wesley wasn’t disagreeing with Gunn, just asking Angel’s opinion, but Angel was staring so hard at the floor that he might not have heard either of them. Gunn and Wesley stood nearly as still as Angel, waiting.</p>
<p>When Angel finally raised his head, he looked straight into Wesley’s eyes. “You’ll kill me.” Wesley nodded. Angel turned his head abruptly in the direction of the kitchen, took a step and nearly slid on one of the drawings, then knelt and quickly gathered them up. Wesley held his hand out for the drawings, but Angel took them into the kitchen, dropped them in the trash, then set about heating some blood. Gunn heard Wesley give a long, quiet sigh, then Wesley sat down at his desk and picked up his pen.</p>
<p>Gunn remained standing and folded his arms. “So what is wrong with how we’re chaining him? What we gotta change?”</p>
<p>Angel shrugged. “Get quicker. Put the chain on the bed and leave it there. Put more locks on the door. Make sure he can’t get out the front door or the windows. Never put your weapons down while he’s in the apartment.”</p>
<p>“The windows? Like putting bars up? Gonna need some story to square that with the apartment manager.” Gunn wasn’t arguing, just trying to plan.</p>
<p>“Or we could use magic.” Wesley was reaching for a book from the shelf next to his desk. “Sigils embedded in the window-frame. A barrier spell. That would stop anyone getting closer than about a foot.”</p>
<p>“You can do that?” Wesley had mentioned magic to Gunn a few times, but always as something that other people did.</p>
<p>“If I can’t, someone can.”</p>
<p>“That take care of the doors, too?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “It’s a complete barrier, so it would stop any of us going through the doors. We’ll make the locks a priority with the new apartment.”</p>
<p>“Sound OK, Angel?” Angel shrugged and said nothing, which Gunn took as a yes. “I’ll get the chain. Put it on the bed right now.”</p>
<p>Angel came into the bedroom before Gunn was halfway done, and the two of them finished the work with Angel still saying nothing. As they were pushing the bed back against the wall, the phone rang on Wesley’s desk. Had to be one of Wesley’s translation clients, so Wesley would probably be busy for the next half hour discussing ten different ways of looking at a single sentence.</p>
<p>Quickly, while they still both had their hands on the bed-frame, Gunn said, “How will we know? When it’s time to kill him. How much further does he have to get?”</p>
<p>Angel frowned at Gunn. “Further than what? You do it before he kills.”</p>
<p>“I’m thinkin’ that Wes’ got used to…” Gunn shrugged. “Livin’ with some risks. ‘cos he had to, when it was just him. But whatever the two of you agreed on back then, I bet it doesn’t look the same now. With me here and you gettin’ worse.”</p>
<p>“Wesley knows what he’s doing. You think he’d hesitate?” A challenge.</p>
<p>“Not for a second, once his alarm’d been triggered. It’s where his alarm’s set that I’m talkin’ about.”</p>
<p>A long pause, then Angel said slowly, “I don’t know where it’s set. If he took risks, I wasn’t there when it happened. You’ll have to ask him.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded briefly. “Yeah. I’m gonna argue this with him till we’ve both got set to the same point. You want us to tell you afterwards what point we decided?”</p>
<p>“No. It’s best if I don’t know. So Angelus can’t know either. Argue it soon.”</p>
<p>Gunn let go of the bed and stepped back. “Yeah. The vision. We’ll be done by tomorrow.”</p>
<p>Wesley was still on the phone but he wasn’t talking translation - unless he’d just been given a lead for a client in a whole new league. “Thank you. Yes. I’ll call him right away. That would make so much difference. Thank you.” After he’d put the phone down Wesley turned to Gunn, looking almost dazed with surprise and relief. “Isn’t that incredible? I wouldn’t have guessed she’d give us a second thought.”</p>
<p>“I just came in at the end. Who was it?”</p>
<p>“Lilah Morgan. She’s heard of an apartment in Lawndale that sounds very promising. It’s on the second floor, and one bedroom is on the corner of the building, doesn’t share any walls with rooms from other apartments. The room underneath it’s a storeroom, and the couple in the apartment above are practically deaf. She’s told the property manager about Angel and the noise, and he said there had never been any complaint about noise from that room, not even when his sister’s three boys were sleeping in it.”</p>
<p>“Lawndale? What’s the rent?”</p>
<p>“The same as we’re paying here. And it’s available from the beginning of February.”</p>
<p>“Call him now!” Gunn shook his head slowly. “Lilah Morgan. Wonder which one of us she’s sweet on.”</p>
<p>Wesley almost giggled and definitely blushed. “It’s not me, so it’s either you or Angel.”</p>
<p>“She’s met Angel?”</p>
<p>“She’s seen a photograph. Of the two of us coming out of the old building, apparently.”</p>
<p>“Well, I don’t think it’s me, either. She didn’t tell the property manager about the vampire seer thing, did she?”</p>
<p>“No. She said we used to work together until he got the head injury. And I had another partner now, working on our investigations side.”</p>
<p>“Just ‘business’ partner?”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “She said the bedrooms were both large double rooms. But I can’t see that as a real hint about us.”</p>
<p>“Wha’d’you wanna tell the property manager about us?”</p>
<p>Wesley looked hard at Gunn, not uncomfortable, just assessing. Finally, with a quick lift of the eyebrows: “Nothing. What about you?”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded. “I’m good with nothing. Maybe if it was completely separate from our work, but… I spend about half of each day tellin’ people how smart you are, how you can find out anything. You’re exactly the expert they need. And you are, and I love sayin’ it. But I’m not ready to find out how much business we’d get if I knew all the time I was sayin’ it they were thinkin’, ‘Yeah, yeah, course you’d say that. He’s your boyfriend!’ Not ready. I’ll tell the truth if they ask outright. But they don’t ask.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “It’ll be my name on the lease. My references. I’ll introduce you as my partner when we go to see the apartment. If he asks, he asks.”</p>
<p>They saw the apartment that evening, and the property manager - a young Korean guy called Gavin Parks - didn’t ask them anything except whether it was the type of apartment they were looking for. He wasn’t rude, exactly, but very brisk and detached, like they should all know they didn’t have to convince each other, because Lilah Morgan had made it a done deal.</p>
<p>Back home, while Wesley was filling in the application for the new apartment, Gunn received his own call with good news. Grouw had mentioned their training problems to his sister Yan, and she’d asked if they’d be interested in sessions with some of the other guards from her work. She thought she’d be able to find them enough partners to keep up a couple of sessions a week. The demons would come to L.A. - making use of the generous travel allowance in their contracts - and wouldn’t expect anything more for their time than maybe a bowl of noodles or a beer at Caritas. They’d do it for the exercise, the change of scenery, and because they’d be plain curious about Wyndham Gunn.</p>
<p>Could be perfect. Endless supply of tough demons, all with years of their own training in fighting and controlling other demons. Wow, think that they could learn with two sessions every week. Use the rest of the week to keep in shape. Perfect, except…</p>
<p>“Grouw, you’re a star. And Yan. C’n I wait till Wes gets home and then get back to you? Oh, hey, where is it Yan works, again?” Wesley had been listening to the conversation anyway, and was now looking at Gunn questioningly. Gunn raised his hand, meant as a signal that Wesley should wait for something.</p>
<p>“It’s Ussur.”</p>
<p>“Ussur, yeah.” Gunn pointed at Wesley, wanting him to memorise the name and then get into research mode; and Wesley nodded, and started by writing the name down. “Wes shouldn’t be too late. Hell of an idea, Grouw. Thank you.”</p>
<p>“So what do you want to know about Ussur?” Wesley was opening a battered old book about three inches thick.</p>
<p>Gunn glanced towards the closed door of Angel’s room then said quietly, “How they treat their prisoners. I don’t want to think that Yan and her boyfriend would… do whatever was done to Angel. But if the prison where they work is even a tenth of that, then we can’t have anything to do with them. Can we?”</p>
<p>Wesley looked shocked. “No. No. Of course not. I hadn’t thought of that. You liked them. And she’s doing this because you’re Grouw’s friend. It’s a real favour, from all of them.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Hope I can still be his friend if we have to say no. God, couldn’t tell him the real reason.” Or what if Grouw knew about his sister, the things she did, and thought it wasn’t a big deal? That’s be even worse. No, leave all that till Wesley had their answer. And don’t even think about the effect it might have on their business. “Anything I can do?”</p>
<p>An hour later they had found references to Ussur in three books. The books described it as a terrible place, but largely because of the nature of its inmates: all so dangerous they had to be kept in permanent solitary confinement, no contact through the centuries of their sentence with anyone except their guards. And it was part of the sentence that the guards would only ever treat them as objects to be contained, not acknowledging any aspect any prisoner’s identity - not talking, not listening, not showing any awareness that the prisoner had a history, or that one prisoner could be distinguished in any way from another. Gunn and Wesley agreed that this treatment could be considered a form of mental torture - punishment, definitely - but when Angel thought they were his guards and shrank from Wesley in terror, it wasn’t any kind of silent treatment that he was remembering.</p>
<p>Refusing to be provoked, refusing to have any emotional reaction to a prisoner you knew was a monster, day after working day… The guards of Ussur must have some serious self-control, and Wesley and Gunn couldn’t see any reason, from any of the books, to have reservations about training with them.</p>
<p>“We should tell Angel, though, before we get back to Grouw. He doesn’t know yet, does he, that we’ve met those guards?”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head. “Just knows Grouw has a sister from out of town. If he even remembers who Grouw is these days.”</p>
<p>“I’ll see if he’s lucid. Could you bring the Radnor over and keep it open to that page?” Wesley knocked on Angel’s door. “Angel? Can I come in?”</p>
<p>A pause, then footsteps, and Angel opened the door. “What is it, Wesley?” Impatient.</p>
<p>“Charles and I may have found some people to train with. For the times when you’re not able to train.”</p>
<p>“Wasn’t it just -” Angel frowned, seeming puzzled. “How long have you been looking?”</p>
<p>“A few days, that’s all. Charles’s friend Grouw has just called with an interesting idea, but we want to discuss it with you before we take it any further.”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>Wesley took a deep breath, then released it. “Have you ever heard of a prison dimension called Ussur?” Another frown, then Angel grunted a no. Wesley gestured to Gunn to pass the book to Angel. “Could you read that page? It’s the fullest description of Ussur that we could find.”</p>
<p>Angel read, expressionless, then gave the book back to Gunn. “So?”</p>
<p>“Grouw has a sister who works as a guard in Ussur. Charles has met her. She may be able to arrange for us to train regularly with some of her colleagues. We think it would be very valuable training.”</p>
<p>Angel stared at Wesley, then at Gunn, then back at Wesley. “Are they duals?”</p>
<p>“Yes. All the colleagues we’ve heard of, anyway.”</p>
<p>A long silence, then: “I don’t want to meet them.”</p>
<p>“You won’t. They won’t come here. You won’t train with them. But you don’t think… it’s wrong?”</p>
<p>A fractional shrug. “They could be different.” To Gunn, sharply: “Did she frighten you?”</p>
<p>“She would in a fight. Talking with her over a meal, she made me laugh.”</p>
<p>“Do it, then. Nothing to do with me.” Angel turned away and shut the door.</p>
<p>Their night of looking for a non-existent costume-drama movie suddenly caught up with Wesley, and he went to bed as soon as he’d finished the application for the new apartment. Gunn stayed up playing at the computer for another couple of hours, but that evening the game seemed tame compared with what he was imagining about the fights he and Wesley would have with the duals, and he did his worst yet in the game. He also had the excuse of being distracted by good thoughts about the new apartment and by bad thoughts about coming to that agreement with Wesley over when they would kill Angel. They should talk in the morning, first thing, while they were still in the bedroom with that extra door between them and Angel.</p>
<p>In the morning, as soon as he was sure Wesley was fully awake, Gunn sat up in bed and said, “There’s something we need to work out.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked alarmed, and quickly levered himself up. “What am I doing wrong?”</p>
<p>“God! No!” Gunn reached out and put his hand over Wesley’s, and kept it there while he told Wesley what he’d been thinking, in much the same way as he’d told Angel.</p>
<p>Wesley started nodding immediately. “Yes, of course. On the day he gets loose, we can’t afford to find ourselves arguing about whether this is the time.”</p>
<p>“So where has your alarm been set up to now? What did you two agree?”</p>
<p>“Oh.” A sigh. “That at the first warning that he was breaking free, I should run. Grab a crossbow and run. Wait somewhere safe with a view of the door - like the end of the hallway - and kill him if he came out. He refused to let me plan for… what would happen if he killed me while we were inside the apartment.”</p>
<p>“What? How could you plan for that?”</p>
<p>“If we were always locked in whenever we were in the apartment. And I used holy water or crosses to make sure he couldn’t handle the keys. But he said I had to be able to run. And that none of my ideas for the holy water and the crosses would slow him down by even ten minutes. If I wanted to protect people from him, my best chance was to run.”</p>
<p>“Damn straight.”</p>
<p>“Otherwise we talked as if… he’d get to the point where he knew it was time. He’d tell me to do it. Or a vision would tell us both.”</p>
<p>“A vision?” They had to be thinking the same thing now, about the last vision. “No, they’d make it clearer than that, wouldn’t they? They’d show what would happen now. What he’d done in Prague… That was just a warning.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “I’m happy for us to treat it as just a warning. But we should start carrying stakes all of the time in case he breaks free while we’re still chaining him. And we should keep at least two crossbows right by the door and be ready to run.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Starting this morning. What if he doesn’t come after us, and he changes back in a few hours? How can we know that it’s safe to go back? Or did you have a signal worked out?”</p>
<p>“I’d decided I’d wait until the next morning and get close enough to the door to be able to talk to him. Angelus is clever in his way and there was a time when he could have pretended to be Angel. But now he’s too fractured, he’s lost his skills for dealing with people, even more than Angel has. When you talk to him it’s always too obvious that he’s enjoying himself. You saw how ashamed Angel was the morning after that time we used the net, how worried he was about what Angelus might have done. That was all he could think about. Angelus couldn’t make a convincing pretence of feeling like that, not even for the chance to kill us both.”</p>
<p>“Hmm. I’d need him to do somethin’ else to prove it, ‘fore I’d get closer’n twenty feet or give up my crossbow. Like… have him chain himself to the bed. Need to find out if he could close those locks himself.”</p>
<p>“We’ll test that this morning. Good.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Good.” Gunn relaxed and smiled. “Thought that’d be much tougher to sort out.”</p>
<p>“Why? It’s the sensible thing to do.”</p>
<p>“Guess… I was thinkin’ how much you deserve a break from bein’ sensible. Must sound like I’m ripping holes in what you been doin’ so far. You know it’s nothing like that?”</p>
<p>Wesley turned his head and bent to press his lips to Gunn’s shoulder. “You know how many times each day I’m made aware of how lucky I am? I know how much I need you.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Over the next week Wesley’s application went through as expected, and the lease was settled to start on Monday the 12<sup>th</sup> of February. Yan asked when they were looking to start training with the guards, and they decided they’d be ready by the week after the move.</p>
<p>They got used very quickly to keeping their stakes at hand whenever they were in the apartment. They didn’t have to chain Angel during that week, but hardly an hour seemed to pass without some reminder of how quickly he could now change. Angel had some form of hallucination every day, and they could be triggered anywhere, at any time. The hallucinations that started when he was in his room were usually very quiet, and sometimes they didn’t realise that he was having one until they knocked on the door and tried to talk to him. Angel seemed less concerned now about how he was getting worse, was less and less likely to ask them what he’d been doing, how many gaps he was having – even when the gaps must have been obvious, like the times he woke up on the floor.</p>
<p>Gunn was beginning to wonder if they’d already seen the last time when Angel would be lucid after a vision. Seemed so long since he’d been able to tell them what the vision meant and then join them in the mission – join them in a real mission, anyway, with someone really there to be rescued. His last lucid vision had been that strange repeat of the vision of the three kids in the nest at Vernon and La Salle; and maybe that was why the vision had been so strange, because it was trying to tell them something about Angel, not about the mission. Was that the rule, that any vision about something that had already happened was a warning about Angel? Or about Angelus?</p>
<p>On the morning of the last Tuesday of the month, Gunn got a call from Anne. There was something weird happening with some cops in the area, suddenly making life impossible for the kids on the street, and yeah, she’d taken it to the precinct house, and if he and Wesley had time to come by the shelter, that’d be the easiest way for her to explain just where things got weird. Gunn and Wesley did have time, would be over in half an hour. Anne said that Rondell might be at the shelter when they arrived. “George too, maybe. They’ve been in on this, helping us. I told them I was going to call you and they’re… dealing with it. Just so you know.”</p>
<p>Gunn was ready to meet Rondell again, he wasn’t gonna stress over it, but yeah, he was glad when it turned out that Rondell wasn’t at the shelter - for Wesley’s sake, mostly. They went up to Anne’s office and she told them the trouble had started about two weeks ago and seemed to be getting worse. Kids had been showing up at the shelter desperate to get off the streets, saying they’d been threatened by some scary, scary cop, chased even, or beaten. All the kids swore they’d been doing nothing wrong, except maybe looking like what they were: young and homeless.</p>
<p>Anne had called Rondell, asked if they’d been getting the same trouble. They hadn’t, but they came to talk to the kids, asked around on the streets, and found that these scary cops were just in Precinct 89, nowhere else, and that no one could remember seeing any one of them before two weeks ago. The precinct still had its regular cops, that most of the kids got to know by sight after a month or so on the street, and the regular cops were treating the kids the same as ever. Though maybe some of those regulars had got kind of smug, and when was the last time anyone had seen one of the regulars out working at night?</p>
<p>Rondell and his crew figured out which streets the scary cops had been seen in most often, found safe places where they could take up watch, and after four nights they’d collected badge numbers for seven of the scary cops, and could describe each of those cops well enough for the kids to be able to recognise the ones that had threatened them. Anne went to the precinct house to make complaints against the seven officers, giving the details of all the threats to the kids. The cop on the desk took down the names, times and places, but by the third he was laughing and shaking his head, telling her the kids must be playing a joke on her - because there weren’t any officers with those numbers assigned to the precinct. Anne had asked Lindsey the lawyer for help and he’d got back to her just the day before saying exactly the same as the cops: that the kids must be playing her for some reason, because those badge numbers all belonged to officers who were dead. He’d given her the list of the names and when they’d died, and she didn’t try to argue with him but went straight to the library and looked for newspaper reports on the dead officers. She found reports of five of them, all with photographs, made copies to show to the kids and to Rondell’s crew - and of course they’d recognised all five cops. So what the hell were they dealing with here and how could they stop it since obviously they weren’t going to get any help from the law?</p>
<p>Wesley said, “I think we can take it that they’re not vampires. Which essentially leaves us with zombies, and then the questions are: who is controlling them, and with what, and from where? If we can break the control, the zombies will… return to their natural state.”</p>
<p>“They’ve gotta know about this at the precinct house. Way the regulars’re leavin’ the streets at night. Bet it comes from there.”</p>
<p>“I agree. But the material for the spell that’s controlling them, that could be located anywhere. And we have to find that material in order to destroy it and break the spell.”</p>
<p>“Could be anywhere, huh?”</p>
<p>Wesley pulled a face. “Within the area of the precinct, probably. The range is usually limited to a few miles. There are spells that can reveal how another spell is being cast. That would be the most direct way of answering our questions, though it may take a few days to find a suitable spell. And a suitable person to cast it. We’ll almost certainly need to get close enough to one of the zombies to cast our spell around it. And then once we’ve found the source, we’ll need a strategy for the raid.”</p>
<p>“Sounds like Rondell and the crew are the best bet for getting us close. They know where to wait. Sure they’d be up for the raid, too.”</p>
<p>Anne said, “Can I tell Rondell what you’re planning? I know he’ll call today to see what you said.”</p>
<p>“Go ahead. Uh… he and the crew aren’t likely to try anything in the meantime, are they? Go out ‘n’ try to bag a zombie? That’d be a bad idea, right, Wes?”</p>
<p>“A very bad idea, especially if you consider that they’re experienced and fully-equipped police officers as well as zombies.”</p>
<p>Anne smiled. “I’ll put it to them like that. Should make them think. When will you know how long you’ll need?”</p>
<p>“By this evening, I think. I’ll call you by ten, at the latest.”</p>
<p>Wesley had sounded confident with Anne, but as soon as they got in the truck he sank deep into troubled thought, frowning hard at the dashboard and sighing frequently.</p>
<p>“We got that much of a problem?”</p>
<p>“No, no, not really.” Wesley’s tone was distracted but lighter than Gunn had expected. “Just wondering if I should forget about looking for something myself and call in a full magic-user straight away. Since I’ll probably have to do that anyway. How selfish - and irresponsible - is it for me to want to find out for myself what our options might have been? When a full magic-user could do it all for us in a fraction of the time.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed. “Man, you should’ve told me how much you loved researchin’ spells. I’d’ve been lookin’ for work for you right from the start.”</p>
<p>Wesley closed his eyes briefly and gave a tired-sounding sigh. “It’s not like that, Charles. This would be such a good opportunity for me to take a measure of my…” Another sigh. “My current limitations. I wouldn’t trust any test I set myself.”</p>
<p>“Oh. Why’d you need a test? You workin’ towards a diploma or somethin’?”</p>
<p>“I have a diploma, but I might not be entitled to it since I lost my arm. I want a test to see how much useful magic I can still do. If the answer is ‘almost none’, then I’ll know for the future that we’ll always have to bring in a full magic-user. And my instincts tell me that this would be a good test. But it’s definitely not the most efficient approach to dealing with the zombies.”</p>
<p>“You can’t just work around things? See you do that all the time. I’d’ve thought it was like cooking.”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “When a spell says to do something with your left hand, that’s rarely an optional detail. As I’ve discovered. Some types of magic involve creating a… projection of yourself in a realm of ideas, so you can manipulate other ideas in that realm. Or that’s what it feels like, anyway. But it seems I can’t get there anymore. I don’t fit.”</p>
<p>Gunn felt his guts twist at the thought of how he’d laughed, teasing Wesley about loving to research spells. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t trust himself to say anything right now; he’d trust himself to hold Wesley, needed to hold him, but he knew the moment would be gone by the time they got home. “But there’s other spells? Where it doesn’t matter?”</p>
<p>“There are, and ideally I’d like to give myself four hours, say, to look for as many suitable spells as I can find. Spells that would do what we need, that is. And then I’d like a few more hours to see if any of them are within my capabilities. Bearing in mind that I was far from being an expert even when I was whole. I enjoy the theory but I’m uncomfortable with much of the practice.”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Don’t think we’re in a big hurry, are we? You should do it. Zombies haven’t come close to really hurting anyone. Aren’t likely to, either, now everyone knows to stay off the streets. Extra day won’t make any difference.”</p>
<p>“You think so?”</p>
<p>“Yeah.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded and relaxed, and Gunn decided that he hadn’t been totally wrong before: Wesley was looking forward to this piece of research, even though the result might be bad news for himself.</p>
<p>Wesley also had Wyndham Gunn work to do that day, and by ten o’clock, when he’d arranged to call Anne, he’d only been able to spend three hours researching the spells. He had found four possible spells, but they either required a left hand or too much expertise or both, and he’d decided that there was hardly any chance of finding a spell he could perform, even if he looked for another three hours. He told Anne that he was going to ask someone else to perform the spell, and they might be able to cast it the next night.</p>
<p>“Who you gonna ask?” Wesley was still just saying “a full magic-user”, hadn’t mentioned any names to either Anne or Gunn.</p>
<p>“You haven’t met any of them.” Wesley was getting into his jacket. “I’m going out to ask them now. I’ll be gone for at least an hour, maybe two or three.”</p>
<p>“Or you could just phone?”</p>
<p>“There’s an etiquette. Someone in my position has to make the approach in person. Can I take the phone? In case Angel has a vision.”</p>
<p>Gunn passed Wesley the cellphone. “These people dangerous? If they’re that touchy. Maybe you need to call in too.”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “They can be unnerving. Especially if they’ve got company. But if I’m out of contact for two hours, it’s most likely because I’ve had to join in one of Cameron’s endless games of charades.” A sudden smile. “And any attempt to rescue me from that would be taken very badly.”</p>
<p>Gunn never formed any plan of waiting up for Wesley. There wasn’t any point, and he wouldn’t expect it from Wes if he was the one out working late, but he did find himself putting off going to bed. He’d never yet got into that bed (their bed) without Wesley, and the idea felt wrong enough for him to keep deciding on one more game. From the rate at which his yawns increased, he would probably have given in around one a.m., but Wesley got back soon after midnight, tasting of marzipan and smelling of wood-smoke, and rather pleased with himself for succeeding with the very first magic-user he’d visited.</p>
<p>Gunn spent at least two hours with this magic-user during the next night, knew he must have heard Wesley call the guy by name ten or twenty times; but somehow Gunn found it impossible to remember anything about him, except that he was an ordinary-looking white guy. If you took your eye off him for more than… maybe five, ten seconds?… then when you looked back you just didn’t recognise him, would swear you’d never seen this particular ordinary-looking white guy before. Gunn thought he could see Anne, Rondell and the others having the same problem; and making the same decision to keep it to themselves. Wesley was the only one who used the guy’s name.</p>
<p>First, Gunn, Wesley and Rondell drove the guy around and showed him all of the hiding-places that the crew had used when they were collecting badge numbers, so he could choose the best location for casting the spell. He asked a lot of questions about how regular the zombies were at patrolling each street, and at the end he chose 37th Street, between Western and Normandie, where the hiding-place gave good views of the approach and was easy to get into, and where zombies had been seen between two o’clock and three o’clock on at least four nights.</p>
<p>Back at the shelter, Wesley helped with preparations for the spell, which involved about half an hour of intermittent banging, splashing, grinding and chanting from behind the closed door of the kitchen. Everyone waiting outside acted like they couldn’t hear anything, and Gunn reckoned they’d all decided the same: that it was obvious right from the start that if you made one joke, you’d have to make hundreds more. Gunn took the chance to make his first real move in the direction of peace with his crew, going over to Rondell and asking him if there were any new cops on their streets, if they were still able to use the same system to keep clear of cops during the patrols.</p>
<p>Rondell didn’t seem to need more than a couple of seconds to decide that Gunn wasn’t trying any kind of dig, and soon they were able to move on to what had changed with the crew itself: new people who’d joined, what they’d done to mark the holidays, new ideas they were trying, new problems. George joined them and the talk became more about telling stories: the best moments of the last few months, and then, more and more, good moments from the months and years before that. They didn’t ask Gunn anything about the changes in his life, not even to mentioning that they knew he’d saved those three kids from the nest. But he’d known they wouldn’t ask, and knowing had made it simpler for him to start with the peace-making; he didn’t have to get any story ready about how he was earning a living, how he was fitting in with Wesley’s friends.</p>
<p>“You still play pickup on Sundays?”</p>
<p>“Most Sundays yeah.”</p>
<p>“Got room for one more?”</p>
<p>Rondell and George looked at one another, then Rondell said, “Sure. So you haven’t got onto… what is it? ‘Cricket’?” Could almost be taken as a genuine question. A mild dig, by Rondell’s standards.</p>
<p>“Pickup’s still good for me. Give me a call, yeah, when you’re plannin’ to go out?”</p>
<p>There was only room for three in the hiding-place: the magic-user, Wesley and Rondell. They drove over to 37th Street for one o’clock, leaving Gunn, George and the rest back at the shelter. Gunn had suggested that he and George could take the other car and wait a couple of blocks over, but Rondell said that if the zombies saw them parked and went to deal with them, that might throw off the plans for the spell. So Gunn was at the shelter waiting again while the action was somewhere else; but at least this time the crowd of them waiting could go into the kitchen and get sodas and snacks.</p>
<p>“Action” probably wasn’t the right word, anyway, not from what Wesley had said. Watching an ordinary-looking white guy making a circle on the sidewalk with a potion that just looked like iced tea, then making another circle inside the hiding-place and sitting inside it where he could look out at the sidewalk, and then waiting and waiting for the zombie to walk along the sidewalk and into the circle. Even with the business of the magic-user having to keep on anointing his face and his hands with the potion while he waited, you were still looking at the demon-hunting equivalent of ice-fishing.</p>
<p>All of the action would happen inside the magic-guy’s head, nothing to see from the outside. When the zombie stepped into the circle, the guy would get to see the spell (or feel it, maybe - Wesley’s description was really confusing), and the guy would know the type of spell, and the spell would guide him towards its source. Rondell would keep a lookout for the cops and then do the driving, and Wesley would act as liaison for the guy, like he’d been doing all night.</p>
<p>At about a quarter after three, Rondell called Gunn to say that he and Wesley had just run the spell guy home - Wesley was walking him up to his apartment right now, and then they’d be coming back to the shelter. They’d tracked the spell to some hidden room on the third floor of the precinct building, and he reckoned they’d need at least a day of hard thinking to figure out how to get in there and break the spell and get out, all without being arrested or maybe shot.</p>
<p>You couldn’t say Rondell and Wesley had bonded or anything, but they’d made a start on learning how to work together, and they each took their parts quite naturally in telling the story of tracking the spell. The source or focus for the spell was a small statue of Granath, a god of zombies, and the spellcaster must be keeping this statue in an entirely closed room, because the spell couldn’t be cast under any form of natural light, not even moonlight. The spellcaster was driven mainly by feelings of anger (not greed or revenge or power), and there was animal fat and blood on his hands, and a lot of sweat. The statue was definitely on the third floor, about twenty feet off the centre of the building, towards the south-east corner.</p>
<p>So… who was gonna walk up there and wander around knocking on walls until he found the hidden room? For the “walking up” you’d need someone who looked like he belonged in a precinct building (outside of custody), and that ruled out every one of them in the shelter or with the crew back at base. And looking like you belonged would only get you so far once you started knocking on walls, unless you were lucky enough that the third floor was deserted at night. Difficult, and it had been a long, strange night, and they soon stopped trying to think about it properly and were just making joke suggestions about storming the building. They agreed to call it a night, meet again the next evening, and get in touch if any of them had any ideas during the day.</p>
<p>When they got home Wesley went straight to his bookcase, pulled out a book and laid it on his desk, then stood for a few seconds about to open it but with his hand still an inch away – and then he shook his head and put the book back.</p>
<p>“Wrong book?”</p>
<p>“I don’t need to know more about Granath. Not right now.”</p>
<p>“Nah. He’ll still be there in the morning.”</p>
<p>Wesley got the book out again over breakfast and read the main points of the spell out to Gunn. Gunn asked him to stop at the first mention of entrails (“I wanna enjoy my Danish.”), but read the full description himself over his second mug of coffee.</p>
<p>“Y’know, I’ve got an idea. For getting into the building. Kind of had it last night but I didn’t wanna say back there.”</p>
<p>“I would have thought you’d say anything anywhere. What’s the idea?”</p>
<p>“We send Angel in. If we can catch him lucid. ‘cos he c’n look a lot like a cop. And if there’s blood with the entrails - and I’m guessin’ that’s why the spellcaster’s got blood on his hands - then he should be able to smell it, find the room quicker than anyone. And he c’n fight his way out, they won’t be able to hold him, and he wouldn’t even notice if they shot him. Yeah, I know it’s a gamble on him stayin’ lucid. But if he does go off track I suppose you could go in and get him, say he’s your poor, crazy cousin.”</p>
<p>Wesley said nothing for a long time, just frowned hard at a point above Gunn’s left shoulder, and worried at his lower lip with his teeth. Finally: “We’d have to be very careful how we put this to the others. Nothing about Angel being able to smell blood.”</p>
<p>“They know how well he can fight. They’ve seen how much he looks like a cop. Makes sense just with that.”</p>
<p>Wesley said slowly, “I’ll tell him the idea in his first lucid period today. See how much he understands, and then if he remembers it next time. After that, if we assume that he will be lucid at some point during the night, we could drive down to the precinct after midnight, say, and wait for that lucid period to arrive.”</p>
<p>Angel decided not to walk in the main door and try to bluff his way past the front desk, but to find a window to get in at the back of the building. There was a window on the second floor open about six inches, nearest light two windows over to the left. Angel climbed up quicker than most people would have taken the stairs, then ten minutes later Wesley and Gunn heard gunshots inside the building, and three or four very long minutes after that, Angel came crashing out of a window on the fourth floor and put a spectacular dent in the roof of a parked Toyota. Gunn took them straight home, not hurrying; they were sure they hadn’t been seen, but they couldn’t afford to be stopped.</p>
<p>Angel told them what had happened, while he was cuffing himself onto the chain around the back seat. The scent of blood had been easy to track and had taken him straight to the captain’s office on the third floor. The captain had been at his desk, had pulled his gun the moment Angel had mentioned Granath, emptied most of a clip into Angel’s chest, and then he’d pushed aside a filing cabinet and led Angel right to the hidden room. You’d have thought the captain was a zombie too, the way the fight just fell out of him when Angel destroyed the statue. The other cops in the building still kept all their fight though, and Angel had taken another shot on the way out. Wesley called Anne and then Rondell and told them that Angel had destroyed the statue; both asked him if Angel had run into any trouble, and he said no. Rondell was going to spend an hour driving the precinct, looking for any sign that the zombies were still around; he thought they should do another night’s watch from the hiding-places too, before they gave the all-clear.</p>
<p>Angel stayed lucid through most of the drive home, but had to be guided up to the apartment. The hallucination probably began soon after they started patching him up, but they didn’t realise until they finished with his back and got him to turn over, and then they saw he was rigid from fear, not from pain. They agreed afterwards that they shouldn’t have been surprised. OK, so Angel had already had one hallucination that night about being in hell, when he’d woken up in his chains in the back seat of the car; but they shouldn’t’ve assumed he was kept to some kind of ration, or that it could only happen when he was in chains. The hallucination in the car had been short (just over four minutes and then he shut down) but he was still deep in the second one when they left him, after they’d finished undressing him and managed to get him under the covers. They both hoped he’d soon be able to sleep again and that his dreams would be peaceful, give him some escape.</p>
<p>Rondell called Gunn on Saturday to tell him that the zombies seemed to be gone: he’d had the crew watching for them all of the previous night, and the surest sign had to be that some of the regular cops were now back on the streets.</p>
<p>“Good work, man. Bet you’re bustin’ to get back on patrol, though. None of us really made for standin’ watch.”</p>
<p>Rondell laughed. “You too.” Then, curious: “Tip-offs with you, isn’t it? Don’t even have to patrol.”</p>
<p>“Well… last-minute tip-offs. Other extreme.”</p>
<p>“Guess it takes both. Call you tomorrow morning, yeah, if we’re shapin’ up for the game of pickup?”</p>
<p>Gunn told Wesley the good news about the zombies, if he hadn’t already gathered from hearing Gunn’s side of the conversation.</p>
<p>“They’re talking to you again. Your crew.” Wesley sounded even more relieved and pleased than Gunn.</p>
<p>“Starting to. Not ready to say your name to me yet, but starting to.”</p>
<p>Wesley smiled and shook his head. “I don’t blame them. I’m the reason you’re… not there anymore. That’s too much to make up for.”</p>
<p>“Nah. Couple of games of pickup with ‘em - maybe just the one tomorrow - and they’ll remember how much of a pain in the ass I can be, have ‘em lining up to thank you for gettin’ me off their backs.”</p>
<p>Wesley started to give the smile that Gunn expected, then something went wrong. “Pickup?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, they still play on Sundays. Seemed the best way of keeping things moving. Can’t leave it all to Anne. Why, we got something planned?” Wesley shook his head, but still looked withdrawn, and kind of puzzled. “You got some beef with pickup?”</p>
<p>Slowly: “No. No. That’s excellent progress, if they’ve invited you to join them. I would never have predicted it a week ago.”</p>
<p>“Me neither. But somethin’s bugging you.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked at him, then sighed. “It’s too stupid to be worth telling you. But I think I’d rather have you knowing that…” Another sigh. “That I’m capable of coming up with such utter nonsense that just has to be ignored. Rather than having you waste a second of your time trying to guess at something that would make sense.”</p>
<p>Gunn couldn’t help grinning, loving how this man could surprise him with the things he thought, with the words he used for the things he thought. “Can’t wait.”</p>
<p>“Well… I really am pleased that you’re talking to your crew again. It’s… haunted me that you had to make that choice.” Gunn nodded, to show that he understood and believed. “But when you said ‘a game of pickup’ I suddenly had this image of you… going back to your crew.” He rubbed the heel of his hand against his forehead, while Gunn’s mouth dropped open. “And you don’t have to say anything because that image doesn’t come from anywhere. The only thing that’s bothering me is… not understanding my own thought processes.”</p>
<p>Deeply sceptical: “A game of pickup?”</p>
<p>“Yes, exactly. If you’d said you were going to patrol with them once a week. Or join them for weapons training…” A shrug. “And I’m simply glad, and relieved. But pickup…” He shivered. “I’m still getting the image. Ridiculous.”</p>
<p>A long, long silence, then Gunn said, “C’n I take you to bed? You won’t let me say anything…”</p>
<p>Wesley’s nod said, “God, yes!”, and they stood up and pressed themselves together, and had their hands under one another’s shirts before they reached the bedroom door. They didn’t get to the bed, not that first time, didn’t get more than a few inches away from the door. More than anything, they struggled not to break the kiss, used the door for support while their hands were tugging at belts and knots, working together first to get Wesley’s pants down, then Gunn’s. They didn’t break the kiss when Wesley slid his fingers into his mouth, when their tongues were almost fighting, both so fierce with the need to get the fingers wet. The kiss was nearly as fierce after Wesley had taken his fingers out, but then it froze on a gasp when Wesley parted Gunn and slowly started pushing into him. After Wesley was full in, Gunn got his fingers wet the same way, and pushed into Wesley just as slow and deep.</p>
<p>They ended up on the floor. Maybe still in the same kiss, Gunn wouldn’t be surprised. They got rid of their clothes in a lot of stages, long gaps in between, and when they were finally naked they lay entwined and quiet, their mouths closed, just barely touching. Eventually, though, they felt the carpet and a chill, and they got into bed.</p>
<p>“I shouldn’t even ask, should I, if you’re OK with me playing tomorrow?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “The rational part of me - such as it is - was always OK.”</p>
<p>“I’m glad you told me. Even though you thought it was stupid.”</p>
<p>Wesley smiled and drew himself even closer. “So am I.”</p>
<p>Rondell did call on Sunday morning, and Gunn drove off to meet the crew at the Venice courts soon after he and Wesley had eaten lunch. As he’d expected, he got more than one person asking him if he was looking to come back to them, always put just enough as a joke; they probably all had different reasons for asking, but none of them took it any further after getting his “Oh yeah, any day now.” Gunn might have had more problems with keeping his temper if he wasn’t also dealing with the fact that any mention of the idea of “going back to his crew” now seemed the quickest thing to get him horny for Wesley. Mostly, though, he enjoyed the game, enjoyed it for the exercise and the sun and the company like he enjoyed the nest-building with the boys; didn’t matter, anymore than with the nest-building, that part of the reason he was there was to get something done.</p>
<p>He got back to the apartment around four, full of energy and confident about finding Wesley ready and waiting to be taken back to bed. He ran up the stairs, and was turning the last corner when he heard Wesley’s voice, above and close, and tense and urgent. “Charles? Don’t come up. It’s happened.”</p>
<p>Gunn stopped where he was at the bottom of the last flight of stairs. Wesley was standing at the top with his back to Gunn, his gaze fixed at some point along the hallway, and with a crossbow held to his side. There was a second crossbow leaning against the wall by Wesley’s leg. “Oh, Jesus. When? How long have you been here?”</p>
<p>“About an hour. No, don’t come up yet. I need you to go to the trunk of the car and get the crossbows. There should be two. And some stakes.”</p>
<p>“Got it.” Gunn ran down to the car, got the crossbows and four stakes, and ran back. They lined all of the spare crossbows against the wall, and Gunn got into position by Wesley’s side, ready to hand him the bows when the time came.</p>
<p>“Did it happen when you were chaining him? How far did you get?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head and Gunn heard him swallow. “It’s worse than that. There wasn’t any vision. I was at the desk reading. He was in the room with the door open, he’d been very quiet. Then I heard him moving around. Suddenly at first, then slowly. Deliberate. Though I didn’t think of it like that at the time. And then he said…” Swallowing again, then very slowly: “ ‘Fee, fie, foe, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.’ And he was coming towards the door. Even if I hadn’t heard the words, I would have known it was him from the tone of his voice. I was running before he was even in the room. I didn’t look back. And the other things he said, before I could get out…” A tight, shaking sigh. “I thought I knew but… Nothing can prepare you for that. For what he’ll do with what he knows.”</p>
<p>“What did he say?”</p>
<p>Wesley just shook his head, then after a short silence he said, “I keep thinking… For most of the time after you left I’d been reading on the couch. If I’d been there instead of the desk… What you’d’ve found when you -”</p>
<p>“Don’t, Wes.” Gunn touched his hand gently to Wesley’s back, but kept his tone very firm. “I don’t hear anything. Are we sure he’s still in there?”</p>
<p>“I would have heard it if he’d gone out of one of the windows. He wouldn’t attempt that, anyway, not during the day. He’d be jumping straight into direct sunlight.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded. “So what’ll he be doing?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. Waiting inside the front door, I suppose, in case we’re stupid enough to go and check on him. He was making quite a lot of noise for the first ten or fifteen minutes. Then nothing.”</p>
<p>“Breaking things?”</p>
<p>“Tearing books, I think. I’m fairly sure we still have a computer.”</p>
<p>“Have you tried talking to him, since he went quiet?”</p>
<p>“Several times. The first time he - I think he was pretending that he was Angel. So he could… take a different attack. The times since then, there’s been nothing.”</p>
<p>“So we wait. Until he talks to us.”</p>
<p>Gunn couldn’t hear any sound at all from the apartment. If it’d been a human sitting in wait for this length of time, you’d have heard him shifting position, at least once. Scratching or sighing or something. With a human, you could use a mirror to check inside the door, get a look without having to get too close. Were they going to both stay here when the sun went down? Or should they split up, have one outside covering the windows? And if so, which one?</p>
<p>“This is what that vision was warning us about, isn’t it? That one of him in Prague.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “It must be. And it did make us put the crossbows by the door. If he didn’t know I was out here with them… He’d be miles away by now.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but just until he changed. Then he’d make his way back. So that’s - Oh, God. Unless the vision was warning about more than this? That he won’t change back this time?”</p>
<p>Wesley took a deep breath, then said, “Yes. That’s possible. Very possible, since this happened without a vision. In which case there’s no point in waiting here. We have to go in. And we should do it before sunset.”</p>
<p>Gunn went first, a couple of yards ahead of Wesley. They were gambling that the fight Gunn was going to have with Angelus would last long enough for Wesley to get in position for that crucial shot. Gunn was expecting Angelus to be out of sight behind the door, knew he’d have to leap into the room if he was going to avoid getting jumped, but Angelus turned out to be in plain view, the first thing Gunn saw when he got in range of the doorway. Angelus had moved the armchair over to the front door, maybe ready to wait for hours for Wesley to do the stupid thing, but he’d had fallen asleep while he waited, and he was wearing his human face in sleep.</p>
<p>Wesley stood at a safe distance with the crossbow while Gunn very quietly got the net, a pike, and the handcuffs. Angelus showed no sign of waking while Gunn covered him with the net, or when Gunn hauled the chair around to face into the room. The route to the bedroom could have been clearer – Wesley’s chair, right in the way - and getting Angelus to even start moving in that direction… Well, standing in front of him jabbing with a pike wouldn’t have been Gunn’s first choice of technique. But Angelus would have to see that Wesley was ready to kill him if he didn’t co-operate, and he was smart enough to play easy for now. Save the fight for another day.</p>
<p>Wesley said quietly, “Wake him up,” and Gunn stabbed with the pike, an inch or more deep into the pale stomach where the black shirt hung open.</p>
<p>Angelus jerked awake with a snarl, though he still kept his human face. He saw Gunn and lunged at him, arm moving up to deflect the pike, but the net brought him short almost immediately. A few seconds of surprise and realisation and then he vamped up in a blaze of rage and started tearing at the net.</p>
<p>“Make one move to take that off and I’ll kill you.” Wesley’s voice wasn’t loud but it was hard and clear, and Angelus paid attention. He stopped struggling with the net, stared at Wesley like he was sizing him up, did the same with Gunn, and then slowly lowered his arms.</p>
<p>Gunn said, “When I tell you, you’re gonna walk slowly towards me. I’ll tell you when to take each step. If you make just one move on your own, we’ll kill you. You understand?” A nod and a growl. Gunn took two steps backwards, came up against Wesley’s chair like he’d expected and pushed it out of the way with his right leg, keeping his eyes fixed on Angelus. “Take one step forward now.” Angelus took the step and the net moved with him, rasping and clattering as it was dragged over the back of the armchair.</p>
<p>When Gunn finally had Angelus lined up with the bedroom door, he stepped to the side, into a patch of sunlight near the window. “Now you’re gonna walk into that room. Take the next step now.” He got Angelus in and past the bed. “Now turn ninety degrees to your right. Now take one step forward. Next, when I tell you, you’re gonna sit down on the bed with your back against the footboard and your legs kept straight out in front of you. Move slowly, starting now.” Angelus kept on doing what he was told, not even giving those low growls any more. “Next, you’re gonna move your arms back, through the footboard. Yeah, you’re gonna have to make some slack in the net to get your arms back that far, and you’re gonna do that by pulling at the net a bit at a time, so you’re pulling it back over your head. Small movements, you’re gonna keep to. Nothing more than an inch at a time. And you’ll keep your hands down by your side at all times. Start now.”</p>
<p>The process was laborious and Angelus started growling again. A different growl, lower but tighter, like he was past the haze of anger and he knew now just what he was going to do to them. When Angelus had finally got his hands far enough through the bars of the footboard, Gunn motioned to Wesley and they both entered the room and took up positions either side of Angelus’s back. Gunn got the cuffs on quickly, no problems working them through the holes in the net, and so they soon had Angelus how they were used to dealing with him: chained into the frame of the bed.</p>
<p>They backed away into the living-room. Gunn gestured that he was going across the room, and left Wesley standing guard by the door. Gunn went first to the desk, where he wrote a message for Wesley saying that they needed to put a spyhole in the door so they didn’t have to stand open guard day and night, because Angel might take days to come back and after this they’d have to keep him locked in all the time. No point putting it off, so he was going to go straight to Home Depot to get all the equipment. Next he put the notepad with the message on the seat of the armchair, fetched the spare crossbows and put them on the seat, and then pushed the armchair over to just behind where Wesley was standing. He held the message up for Wesley to read, Wesley nodded, and Gunn left immediately.</p>
<p>After Gunn had drilled the hole in the door and fitted the spyhole, they closed the door and checked the view, then, after an exchange of messages, went back into the bedroom for Gunn to haul the bed across to the far side of the room. Angelus was lying on his side now, and he was back in his human face; his expression was some sort of hoarded resentment, but he didn’t look at them. Wesley told Gunn later that Angelus had slowly slumped over about ten minutes before Gunn got back, but he hadn’t seen the moment when the face changed.</p>
<p>When the door was closed again and they had both nodded that they were happy now with the view, Wesley turned to put his crossbow down on the armchair, then they looked at one another, finally letting the reaction show, and stepped forward at the same moment to hold one another tight.</p>
<p>Wesley was the first to release his hold, taking a deep breath. “I suppose we’d better see what he was doing while I was out in the hallway.”</p>
<p>They did still have a computer, and there was no obvious sign of damage in the living room; the books were still on the shelves, the scroll that Wesley was translating for Lilah Morgan was still in one piece and still readable. They checked their bedroom next, and as soon as they opened the door they saw that the vampire had done at least one thing: he had torn the arm from Wesley’s best jacket and placed the arm on the bed; slightly bent, the cuff hanging about an inch over the side. Wesley gasped and took a staggering step backwards, looking like he was going to throw up. Gunn grabbed him and started leading him to the couch.</p>
<p>“Wes, Wes, it’s OK. I’ve got you. It’s OK.”</p>
<p>Wesley was struggling weakly against Gunn, looking back towards the bedroom with an expression that was almost desperate. “No. No. I’ve got to -”</p>
<p>“You’ve got to forget it. Don’t let him - Don’t go back in there. I’ll deal with it. Get rid of anything he’s touched. Come on. Sit down. I’ve got you.”</p>
<p>Wesley did sit down, heavily, lay with his head tilted back and his eyes closed. Gunn held his hand (which was noticeably cold) and gently rubbed his thumb over Wesley’s wrist. Eventually Wesley opened his eyes, but he wouldn’t look at Gunn, not properly, kept his gaze fixed on Gunn’s hands.</p>
<p>After a while Gunn stopped waiting for Wesley to look up. “Can I get you anything? Some tea?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head, then after a second squeezed Gunn’s hand and raised his eyes to Gunn’s. “A beer would be very good, after we’ve killed him.”</p>
<p>Gunn was surprised. “We going to? So he’s never gonna change back? It’s that obvious?”</p>
<p>A sigh, then: “I don’t know. I’d want to wait and see, anyway, how well we managed to deal with him. If we could make it worth the risks, to get the visions.”</p>
<p>“Won’t kill him today, then. Beer still good, though?”</p>
<p>“Maybe with dinner. If I can manage to eat anything.”</p>
<p>“You OK for me to…” Gunn gestured with his head towards the bedroom, and Wesley nodded.</p>
<p>Angelus had torn the left arms out of all five of Wesley’s jackets and put the jackets back in the wardrobe with the left sides facing outwards. Gunn couldn’t find the other four arms anywhere in the bedroom. He decided immediately that they’d get Wesley new jackets, he wouldn’t even ask Wesley if he wanted to get the jackets mended. He got a trash bag from the kitchen and stuffed the jackets and the arm into it. On his way to the front door he glanced down automatically as he passed Wesley’s desk, like he was in the middle of his usual routine for emptying the garbage, and he discovered that Angelus had put the other four arms in Wesley’s waste bin, just dumped as far as Gunn could tell, not arranged.</p>
<p>Wesley’s hand seemed warmer. They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Gunn said, “It happened in a bedroom?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “I’d tracked the Kungai to an apartment. One-room. The last time I saw my left arm, it was lying on the bed. In exactly that position. It’s hardly the first time I’ve thought about it, of course. The shock was… realising that he’d been there too. Angelus. Thinking how much he must have enjoyed it.”</p>
<p>“So they’re not separate? You always both talk like they are.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” A long, exhausted sigh. “I don’t know any more. That bastard in there can’t really be Angelus. He’s still got his soul, I’m sure of that, even now. I think he must be… the part of Angel that’s furthest from remorse. Because they do share the same memories. Or they share memories up to the start of the brain-damage. So Angel must have the memories of… every aspect of the other’s sadism. He does know what it’s like to adore inflicting pain. Pain or terror. He always knows. But when he’s whole he’s also sincerely horrified by those feelings, and that’s what’s stronger. Before the brain-damage he was always whole when he had his soul. Now… we’re having to take our luck with whatever fragment of him we get.”</p>
<p>“Luck. Yeah. You know, whatever happens - Whether he changes back or not. We can’t ever leave him unlocked again. If he can do this without any warning… Fuck, Wes! If he hadn’t done that ‘Englishman’ thing, if he’d just walked in on you without saying anything!”</p>
<p>Wesley was looking sick again. “You’ve no idea how glad I am right now that he is a sadist. That he’d rather take the chance to scare me than make sure of getting my blood.”</p>
<p>“No. Think I’ve got some idea.” Gunn swallowed. “D’you think he’d’ve made you into a vampire? Maybe… to set you up for me?”</p>
<p>Wesley looked startled. “I hadn’t -” Slowly: “Maybe. But my gut feel is that he’d regard me as a waste of blood.”</p>
<p>Soon afterwards Wesley went to look through the spyhole, while Gunn checked whether the vampire had left anything for them in the bathroom and the kitchen. Angelus was lying quietly in the same position, might even be asleep; and the bathroom and kitchen were clear.</p>
<p>They phoned out for pizza, which was Wesley’s suggestion and a big surprise to Gunn. He’d decided early on that Wesley would rather take a pint of pig’s blood than get any kind of to-go food (probably partly being a food snob, partly trying to save money, and partly being paranoid about anyone coming to the apartment). But tonight Wesley was finally ready to have someone else do all the work.</p>
<p>The sun went down shortly after they’d placed their order, and when Wesley next looked through the spyhole, the room had got so much darker he could only barely see that Angelus was still on the bed. Gunn unlocked the door and turned the light on while Wesley covered him, crouched down with the crossbow. Angelus certainly seemed to be asleep, didn’t react at all to the noise or the light.</p>
<p>They allowed themselves just one beer each with the pizza, having even less idea than usual what the next few hours would bring. Wesley asked Gunn about the game of pickup and Gunn told him about the questions and how he’d reacted to them, and also that he’d enjoyed the game and knew the crew’d be fine about asking him again.</p>
<p>“Don’t think I’ll go every time, though. Once a month’s enough to keep things easy. And Wes, we gotta get you a cellphone. You can’t get stuck like that again.” No argument from Wesley, though they talked about whether they should use the new phone as a second number for Wyndham Gunn, or use it as the main number for Angel Investigations. Using it for Angel Investigations would make the most sense since they’d have to change the number anyway when they moved apartments. They agreed they’d been neglecting Angel Investigations since Wyndham Gunn had taken off, that Gunn should spend at least an extra four hours each week trying to build the business up again.</p>
<p>After dinner and another look at the sleeping vampire, Gunn booted up the computer so he could get a start on those four hours with a web search. And then maybe a couple of hours of Tomb Raider. Wesley needed his reading-time on the couch more than ever; mustn’t let himself get spooked about reading on the couch because of what might have happened with Angelus. Gunn opened the browser, reached behind the keyboard for his pen, looked up at the screen again - and leapt back with a raw cry, and with such force that he knocked his chair over.</p>
<p>“Charles! What’s -” Wesley had thrown his book aside and was getting to his feet.</p>
<p>“No!” Gunn shouted the word, made it an order. “Stay! You don’t wanna see.”</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t sit down again, but he didn’t make any move to come closer. “He’s done something, hasn’t he?”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded. “He - In my web browser. He made it so it loads up with a porn site. Really nasty. Sick.”</p>
<p>“Ah. Yes. He’s something, isn’t he?”</p>
<p>“Like you said, you can’t imagine.”</p>
<p>“Are you OK? Is there anything I can do without… coming over?”</p>
<p>“No. It was the shock. I know how to get rid of it. Though if you’d be ready to share another beer with me when I’m done…” Wesley nodded, with a very small, grim smile, then sat down again and reached for his book.</p>
<p>Gunn bent to set his chair back on its feet, then closed his eyes as he sat down again, unable to look at the screen even for the time it would take to switch to another window. He guessed that Wesley was imagining child porn, actually hoped he was. That would be foul - but foul in a random way, not like it was any comment on the two of them. Instead, Angelus had given Gunn an amputee fetishist site. A site for gay men. Like that was the reason he was with Wesley. Like that was the only reason. And he had set it up specially for Gunn, hadn’t he? He knew Gunn would be the one to find it. Wesley was right, you couldn’t imagine what Angelus could do – not till he was doing it to you.</p>
<p>Gunn opened his eyes, and clicked on the first bookmark on his list as the quickest way to get that hideous page out of his browser. But the browser didn’t switch to the L.A. Times: it started loading a second amputee site. Oh, Jesus, had he done this to all of Gunn’s bookmarks? Gunn didn’t dare to try another, but decided to deal straight away with the first problem Angelus had left him. He went through the process of changing the settings for the browser, concentrating fiercely on not seeing or reading any part of the current page. He changed the startup page back to Google, checked the other settings but didn’t find any more surprises from Angelus, and gave a ragged sigh of relief when he finally got back to the safety of Google.</p>
<p>Now he was going to have to check all of his bookmarks. He deleted the ruined one for the L.A. Times and created a new one, and then started working through the rest of the list. Angelus hadn’t touched the other bookmarks at the top level, but there was something waiting for Gunn inside almost every sub-folder. Angelus had added bookmarks to yet more amputee sites (or Gunn assumed they were amputee sites - he was deleting the bookmarks immediately, without loading the page), and he’d given them titles like “Hot Fantasy – Pompous Neurotic Bent over his Books” and “Man on Boy Action - Cowering in the Closet”. Again, Gunn tried not to read them, but he had to read them if he was going to find them and delete them; it wasn’t until some dark, sleepless hour that night that he realised there was a way he could have avoided reading them, if he’d been willing to delete all his bookmarks in one go.</p>
<p>When Gunn was finished he got the beer and took it to the couch. They shared the beer, then touched and kissed and murmured – even laughed. Soon they started to get breathless, though, and they drew apart, looked at one another, then shook their heads and sighed the same resigned sigh.</p>
<p>Gunn said, “Yeah, last thing we should do is spend the night in the bedroom. The one room in the apartment where we wouldn’t hear him. Have to save it up. I’ll take first watch.”</p>
<p>“OK. Make it midnight to four. I’ll do four till eight.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, that’s tonight. But how many nights we prepared to save it? Not lookin’ to live like this.”</p>
<p>“No. It would be impossible. We’ll work out something better, when we know more. Maybe in the new apartment we could… I don’t know… set up a microphone in his room, put speakers in our room. He couldn’t get free without making some noise. And I’m a light sleeper.”</p>
<p>“I know. Hey! What about a baby monitor? We could get one of those tomorrow. Think we’d be OK then to go to bed. Put some more chains on him. Lock all the doors. And take all the keys and weapons into the bedroom with us.”</p>
<p>“Yes. But we’d also need something to keep him away from the windows. A layer of garlic, maybe.” Wesley smiled suddenly. “Or very thick curtains woven from garlic bulbs and crucifixes. Drapes, that is. But I suspect IKEA only does those on special order. We’d have moved apartments by the time they arrived.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed, but a few minutes later he found he had an idea. “You know what you said about drapes? We don’t need IKEA. We c’n make them like you made the net. But put the crosses all over, not just round the edges. Close enough together that he can’t touch any part of it.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked impressed. “That’s a good idea. And not just for curtains. Once we’ve got the protection spells in place in the new apartment, we could use the nets on the floor in each doorway. It might not stop him, but it would slow him down. And give us some more noise, especially if we put some bells in with the crosses. We’d know then, if he was trying to move one of the nets.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I like it.” Gunn laughed again. “Wacky crafts project. We’d have to take away all his shoes, though. Maybe all his socks, too.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “Of course. Or go further and take out everything except the bed. Keep him naked.” Wesley was serious.</p>
<p>“Would slow him down, that’s for sure. But us too, maybe, arguin’ for half the day about how often we really need to be checkin’ at the spyhole.” And then, still laughing, they were touching and breathing hard again - and then shaking their heads and deciding that they were not safe together on the couch and Gunn should go and play his computer game.</p>
<p>Wesley got up to go to bed shortly before midnight, and Gunn stopped the game, took his headphones off, and started up the browser. Working on that search was definitely the best way for him to keep awake and alert.</p>
<p>He was avoiding using his bookmarks, he knew he was. In the first hour he found two new sites that looked promising - and he didn’t add them to his bookmarks. He felt cold, just thinking about opening any of his subfolders. Some day soon, when they had Angelus properly chained up, lying on the floor without an inch of slack, there would have to be a time when Gunn knew Wesley was going to be gone for at least half an hour; and then Gunn would put on his heavy boots and go in there and give the bastard… Well, not a fraction of what he deserved. Couldn’t do it if Angelus was naked though, and Gunn would have to hold back from going for the face. Not because it was too much, but because Wesley mustn’t find out. Soon. Angelus was gonna get it soon. Gunn’s throat was tight, the need pressing up in him to deal out the pain to the place it belonged.</p>
<p>How could Angel even have thoughts like that about Wesley? Even with going crazy, his mind coming apart, his brain shouldn’t be able to start a thought like that, let alone bring it out as words. Finding words in him for despising Wesley. ‘cos yeah, it was as bad as that. With all Wesley had done for Angel, and the way he’d done it, never counting any cost. There shouldn’t be anything, not anywhere in Angel, that could hold dark thoughts about Wesley.</p>
<p>And only about Wesley. There hadn’t been a single word about Gunn. Like Angel thought Gunn was damn-near perfect, couldn’t find one dig he could make about Gunn himself. Not even trying a shot over the race thing. “Prissy College Boy Seeks Buck Nigger” – nothing close to that, not even for one bookmark. And nothing about how Gunn had left his crew. Nothing about his new friends being demons. Nothing either about what Angel must know about Gunn and Wesley and sex - from the sounds he’d heard and from the scent on them. Nothing at all about Gunn. Just Wesley, alone in his sights. When, if there was any justice, any reckoning of who Angel owed, it should’ve been the other way round.</p>
<p>Unless… Had Angel left Gunn alone because he’d forgotten everything about him? Even forgotten that he was black?</p>
<p>Hard to imagine forgetting that, but… If Wes was right about how Angel’s mind worked, maybe Angelus just didn’t know the things that Angel knew. Angelus used to, he and Angel used to share memories, but the damage from the visions had split them apart. So Angelus didn’t really know about Gunn coming to live with them, nothing about Gunn’s crew or the demons or anything else. All Angelus knew was Wesley. Not difficult for him to work out from their bedroom that Wesley was living with a man, and probably an easy guess that this man was the one who used the computer; but no clues to anything else about the man, nothing that could be used directly as a weapon. Just that he had sex with Wesley. Maybe loved Wesley.</p>
<p>Yes. That was possible. So it might not have been a deliberate choice, to aim only for Wesley. Might make a very slight difference to where Gunn aimed his boots. The next time Gunn found a promising new website he added it to his bookmarks – and dealing with his bookmarks hardly bothered him at all now, so he retraced his steps and added the other two sites that he’d avoided adding earlier.</p>
<p>“Wesley?” The first sound of any kind from Angel’s room. Gunn raised an eyebrow and checked the clock (2:38), then walked over in his own good time to check Angelus was still in place on the bed. Angelus must have heard his footsteps, and Gunn thought he could see Angelus lifting his head, trying to raise himself on an elbow. “Wesley? Wesley, please. What happened?” Gunn went back to the computer and carried on with his search. Nice try at anxious, but you’re workin’ the wrong market. “Wesley? I can’t - Wesley?” Angelus made a big show of giving up almost the moment he heard Gunn walk away; his voice sank so low, sounding so hopeless like he might never speak again. Unless, of course, Wesley came up real close, bent to listen.</p>
<p>“Charles?” (2:45) Seven minutes gone by. “Charles, is it you? Is it - Has something happened to Wesley? Did I - Please. Don’t let me - Charles?”</p>
<p>OK. So maybe that really was Angel. If Gunn was right about why none of the bookmarks had been about him, then it couldn’t be Angelus calling him Charles. And if he was right then that meant the change wasn’t permanent after all, and Gunn and Wesley would be able to take things a bit easier. Looked like the Prague vision had only (only!) been warning that Angelus could appear at any time, not warning that there’d come a day when he wouldn’t change back. Bad enough, yeah, but they had experience of dealing with Angelus, of keeping him safely chained and locked in his room; and of sleeping soundly even while he was there.</p>
<p>Gunn couldn’t be sure for himself if Angel was really back. Wesley was the one who knew how to judge. But then as long as they got him properly chained up, Gunn didn’t see any reason why Wesley should have to stand that four-hour watch.</p>
<p>Wesley hadn’t got into bed, was lying fully dressed on top of the bed with a blanket bunched up around him. He was a light sleeper, like he’d said, and he only needed a few seconds to come fully awake and start asking Gunn exactly what Angel had said. They armed themselves with a crossbow and a pike, and Gunn opened the door.</p>
<p>“Wesley! You’re safe. But -” A long pause. “It was bad?”</p>
<p>“It could have been very bad.” Wesley explained what had happened, though he left out the details of what Angelus had said and done; when he described the beginning, he just said he “heard Angelus talking to himself”. Angel listened without asking any questions, hardly showed any reaction except to close his eyes tight, then tighter, and turn his face to the mattress.</p>
<p>When Wesley finished, Angel opened his eyes, looked at Gunn then Wesley, and said quietly, “What are you going to do?”</p>
<p>“Obviously, we have to keep you locked in from now on. We’ll keep you chained. Although, if we can find a way to monitor you, and if we can fit good locks on the doors and windows, then we may be able to dispense with the chains. A lot depends on what we can do to the new apartment when we move there in two weeks time. We’ll be taking some other new precautions, but I don’t think they’ll affect you directly.” Angel nodded slowly, then closed his eyes again. After about ten seconds Wesley said, “Should we kill you?”</p>
<p>Angel gave no sign that he’d heard Wesley, and when he finally opened his eyes, he said, “How could it happen? How can my soul not matter any more?”</p>
<p>Wesley gave a sad, resigned sigh, then explained his theory about Angel’s memory and how it was being broken into pieces by the brain-damage. Angel didn’t challenge any part of what Wesley said. “We could have asked that same question every time he appeared when you had a vision. But because the visions are so violent - not just in their content, but in the way they take you over… After the first time he appeared, didn’t it seem almost inevitable that sometimes the visions would have that effect? I think that we were, in fact, seeing the same process of fragmentation, but now we’ve reached the stage where it can happen without the violence of a vision.”</p>
<p>Slowly, Angel nodded. “What do you think will be next? What else could I do?”</p>
<p>“In practical terms, I think we’ve seen the worst. As long as we can keep you locked in. In other terms…” Wesley swallowed. “I don’t know what I can say. I’m sorry. Is there anything we can do?”</p>
<p>Eventually: “Do your best with the visions. Keep up the training. Don’t ever listen to him. And… can you try to live a normal life?”</p>
<p>Gunn said, “Never have yet,” and felt amazed when Angel smiled.</p>
<p>In careful stages, covered by Wesley with the crossbow, Gunn got Angel clear of the net, out of the handcuffs, and into the chains. They didn’t gag him; it wasn’t necessary, and besides, they needed him to be able to speak if he got a vision. They left the light on.</p>
<p>In bed they held each another tight for comfort, neither making any move towards sex. Gunn said, “I’d want to die. Spend the rest of my life locked up… If you asked me like you did him, I’d’ve said, ‘Yeah. Do it now.’ How can he face it?”</p>
<p>“I think… because of the visions. He thinks they’re his chance to atone. Given to him deliberately because the Powers believe in him. Believe that he can balance out his years as Angelus. If he took death as an escape - when his victims had no escape - then he’d be truly damned, he could never be forgiven. And he needs that hope. He can’t bear to… close his account, not when there is still a chance.”</p>
<p>“So if he stops having the visions, we kill him?”</p>
<p>“We could. Maybe… wait for six months or so after they stopped. See if he started to heal.”</p>
<p>“You think they’d do that, the Powers? Find someone else?”</p>
<p>“It’s possible. I don’t believe, in fact, that the Powers have any particular interest in the state of his account. He’s not a… not a project for them, just an instrument, and they’re only interested in results. If we fail to give them results, yes, I’d expect them to… let us go. Certainly bring someone else in.”</p>
<p>“Hmm. Hope the two of us are gettin’ double-credit for all this. Not like we got anythin’ to atone for.”</p>
<p>Gunn felt the gust of Wesley’s amused snort against his collarbone. “What would you use the credit for? Save it up for the time we need to rob a bank?”</p>
<p>Alonna. He’d trade it in for the promise that Alonna was at peace. Or that - somewhere - she was getting another chance. “Well… was gonna say to buy a few lucky breaks. But then I guess they are lookin’ after us. With the new apartment. Lots of good work. S’pose we’re about even.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>They kept Angel chained to the bed throughout their last two weeks in the apartment. For the first week he was fully chained, but then the monitor and the spyhole showed them that there were, after all, some reliable patterns in Angel’s state of mind, and they started relaxing some of the restraints.</p>
<p>Wesley was the one who noticed these patterns, since he had the monitor by his side most of the time he was in the apartment. Angel talked to himself a lot, Angelus too, and this meant that Wesley was usually fairly sure of Angel’s state of mind at any time, and could tell very easily when the state had changed. After a few days, Wesley realised that, except when a vision hit, he had never heard Angel switch immediately from one state to another: there would always be a quiet period in between. Sometimes the quiet period was only a few minutes long, sometimes it was several hours. Wesley started going into the room to check on Angel at the beginning of each new quiet period, and he always found him either asleep (eyes closed, completely relaxed) or shut down (eyes half-open, body still slightly tense).</p>
<p>By the Friday night Wesley had heard and seen enough to be confident that Angel would always remain in any given state until he either fell asleep or shut down, or until a vision hit and changed his state by force; and this meant that Angelus could not appear without warning after all. They could enter his room when he was Angel - either lucid or in hell or hallucinating or in a vision - and they would be quite safe because they would have at least five minutes to leave the room after he fell asleep or shut down. By the Saturday night Gunn was also convinced, and on Sunday morning they released Angel’s neck and right arm from the restraints, which was enough that he could hold the beaker and raise himself to drink. The relaxation in the restraints was also enough to allow him to read, and when he was next lucid he asked them to bring him some magazines, and he asked for the last two or three books that Wesley had enjoyed (or that he’d hated - anything as long as they hadn’t bored him). They put Angel back in the restraints before they went to bed, and then released him again in the morning.</p>
<p>Most of the time Angel was in hell, which wasn’t surprising since every time he woke up, he found himself in chains. He never spoke when he was in hell, but he flinched and he trembled, and for Wesley the sounds were as clear as words. Wesley and Gunn tried to leave him alone when he was in hell, going in only to feed him, but they couldn’t do anything about the fact that he could hear them through the door; he reacted particularly strongly to laughter, and to footsteps approaching his door.</p>
<p>After they relaxed the restraints Angel was slightly more likely to wake up lucid, and within a minute of waking up lucid he would usually call for Wesley. The first few times, he called because he was anxious and confused and needed to be reassured about Angelus. But he soon managed to remember what Wesley had been telling him about how reliable his patterns were, and he also remembered that Wesley would be listening to the monitor. After that he would still call for Wesley, but only to ask for news of the day’s work or to compare opinions of the book he was reading.</p>
<p>Gunn thought Angel called for Wesley because he was lonely, but Wesley thought he was just bored: Angel was too much of an introvert to seek company just for the sake of it, but he did need some variety and stimulation. Wesley sympathised as he himself could be sent into a mild panic at the idea of even as much as ten minutes in a waiting-room without a really good book to hand, and he would break off his work without hesitation, prepared to give Angel any amount of time he needed. Once Angel realised he was sometimes interrupting Wesley’s work, he told Wesley to bring the work in with him, to read it out and explain what he was doing and thinking. Sometimes he got interested in the problem and made useful suggestions, but at other times (especially with translations) he drifted off to sleep, or he picked up his magazine (maybe pointedly, maybe absent-mindedly – Wesley said he could never tell). If Wesley hadn’t been working when Angel called, then they usually talked about books.</p>
<p>During the second week, Wesley discovered yet another aspect to Angel’s patterns - an exception to his tidy rules about the changes of state, but not a dangerous exception. Angel could switch directly from a lucid state to a hallucination, but this only seemed to happen while he was reading. Presumably each hallucination was triggered by some scene or image in the book. Wesley was hardly ever able to guess from Angel’s words and expressions what a given hallucination was about, let alone guess what might have triggered it. Sometimes Angel vamped up during a hallucination, at other times he was aggressive and hostile, but Wesley had decided by the end of the week that he wasn’t dangerous in any type of hallucination – because he was totally absorbed by the images in his own head, not even aware that he was chained. Exactly like the reverberation phase of a vision, and Wesley knew from experience that even Angelus was harmless in that state.</p>
<p>Angelus appeared four times during those two weeks, and Wesley gradually got the impression that Angelus had also started thinking that he was back in hell - but it sounded as if he enjoyed it there, as if he admired the guards for the way they tortured Angel, and he fully expected them to let him out now he was Angelus again. He got angry (but not savage) when he wasn’t released and he would entertain himself during the wait by planning or reminiscing. Wesley couldn’t bear to listen to what Angelus said; he turned the monitor off and adopted a system of checking in for five seconds every half hour.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Angel had two visions in the second week. The first vision came on Tuesday afternoon and dragged Angel out of hell and into a tunnel under a UCLA dorm. The second vision came early the next evening, when Angel had been quiet and asleep for half an hour. The address was Hollywood and Wilcox, which was the same address as that strange vision that might or might not have been connected to the two guys who died behind the dumpster. In this new vision there was another “she” who needed help - “they” were after her, and “she didn’t know”. This time, however, she had a face: Angel drew a young woman running like she knew her life depended on it. Very young she looked, all angles. “They” weren’t so clear, just two vague shapes running after her. Two arms and two legs each, looked like, proportions pretty-much human. Probably vampires, though Angel wasn’t saying; just “find her, stop them, they mustn’t have her”. Angel was lost in the vision and quite agitated; Gunn and Wesley had to get him fully chained again before they could leave him alone in the apartment, and his agitation made the chaining more difficult than it had ever been with Angelus.</p>
<p>Once again, they spent a good part of a night at Hollywood and Wilcox, with nothing to show for it. They gave up at three a.m. and then decided that they needed to eat and soon settled on noodles. Soon after the food arrived, Gunn said, “D’you think they’re about the same thing? This vision and the one back in October. There’s a nest or something in the area? We need to check out every building? Or every manhole.”</p>
<p>“Probably. Since we failed the first time, they would still be there.”</p>
<p>“Kinda slackers, though. What they been doin’ between now and October? Away on vacation? Or on some vamp health-kick? Detoxin’ on steamed vegetables or spinach or something. Only allowed one pint of blood every four months.”</p>
<p>Wesley gave a brief half-smile, then shrugged. “There might have been more killings. Maybe there’s something special about this girl.” He shook his head slowly, over and over, looked deeply uncomfortable. “I don’t know how many times I’ve had to tell myself that life is arbitrary. That it’s impossible for anyone to be entirely consistent, you’d go insane if you tried.” A pause, then: “Yes, I prefer your diet theory.”</p>
<p>“I’ll get searching. Come back when it’s day. Talk to people. Unless it’s something else totally and we’re missin’ the point like we did before.”</p>
<p>“That’s also possible.”</p>
<p>They ate in silence for a while, then Gunn said, “Unless it’s not a different girl. Maybe it’s exactly the same vision. Like with the three kids and the nest. Only it looked different, because this time he didn’t vamp up and he was able to draw it.” Wesley didn’t look convinced but Gunn carried on. “No, I think that was the night it really happened, back in October. Whatever it was with ‘her’. The dumpster had to be part of it. But tonight… Nothin’ happened tonight.”</p>
<p>“It’s hardly a precise address. We could have been patrolling the wrong alley.”</p>
<p>“Precise enough. We’d’ve heard her screaming, like we did when that girl got dragged up the wall. I tell you, it’s all in the past. ‘n’ I think I’ve figured out what that’s about.” He explained his theory that visions set in the past were messages about Angel.</p>
<p>Wesley was interested in the idea, as long as they didn’t take it as a convenient excuse to give up on a vision. When they failed, they should face that full-on. “So what would the message be, then? Do you think it’s significant that it brought out Angelus the first time but it didn’t this time? What do we look for?”</p>
<p>“Don’t get the feel they can control that - if he vamps up or not. Why would they ever make him vamp up, make him so he doesn’t draw? Same with gettin’ lost in the vision.”</p>
<p>“But you said you thought the second vision with the nest was a message about how often he was going to get lost in the visions.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, and they chose that one to repeat because it was the first vision where he did get lost. They were pointin’ out what was different about it.”</p>
<p>“And what’s different about Hollywood-and-Wilcox?”</p>
<p>“Well… it was the first time since I came onboard that we couldn’t figure out the mission. If they’ve been listenin’ in on us, maybe they’re tellin’ us that, yeah, they will stop the visions if we don’t get the results.”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed and looked sceptical. “I don’t know. It was also the first vision where the two of us had to deal with Angelus together. When you saw what he was like and decided that the net wasn’t good enough. Maybe it’s about how we’re dealing with him now. And if so, is it warning or congratulations?”</p>
<p>“Don’t see them botherin’ with congratulations, but, yeah, take your point.”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “My point’s just… that it’s the type of warning that you can usually only make sense of after the event. Guessing at the meaning beforehand, trying to fit facts around it… I think that can be dangerous because it skews your perceptions and it might stop you noticing something really important. But it does make perfect sense as a way for the Powers to try to send that type of message. If they stopped to worry about whether or not we’d actually understand the message… well, they’d probably never get any visions sent.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed. “OK. I’ll go easy on the guessin’. Check out the area tomorrow, like we said.”</p>
<p>On the way home they passed a movie theatre, and as they waited at the next set of lights, Gunn said, “He never did get to go to the drive-in.” He hadn’t realised until he said the words how much it sounded like Angel was dead.</p>
<p>A pause, then, quietly: “No.” Wesley must have heard the same finality in the words.</p>
<p>“There isn’t any point in takin’ him now, is there? I mean, yeah, we were gonna chain him anyway, but…”</p>
<p>Wesley was shaking his head. “He’d be lucky if he followed even ten minutes of the film. I dread to think how many hallucinations it would trigger. Or what he’d make of the trip as a form of torture.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded, then was quiet for a few blocks. “Wes? What would you say about getting a VCR? TV, yeah, but mostly a VCR. To rent movies.”</p>
<p>A shrug. “Yes. Why not?” Wesley seemed slightly surprised, and like he couldn’t really see the point.</p>
<p>“Can’t see the two of us gettin’ out to the movies again either. Know you’re happy reading. I’m good with my games and everything. But I could really cope with goin’ on a few more dates with you. Even if we have to stay in for ‘em.”</p>
<p>Now Wesley was definitely surprised, and definitely pleased. “I’d like that. We don’t do much… relaxing together, do we? Apart from the obvious.”</p>
<p>“Don’t do much relaxing, period. We’re always on duty ‘cos of him. You, especially. Time we did somethin’ for ourselves. Get the TV right after we move, yeah?”</p>
<p>“A house-warming present to ourselves.” Wesley was smiling. “And an incentive for me to buy that new suit.”</p>
<p>“A suit? You sayin’ you’d get all dressed up for our dates?”</p>
<p>“Of course.” The shock looked and sounded genuine. “It’s how one shows the proper respect.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed. “Respect! English, you’re somethin’ else. So what’ll it show if I’m in the same old T-shirt.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” One of Wesley’s best half-smiles. “A dashing self-assurance that promises very well for the later portion of the evening.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley got the keys to the new apartment first thing on the Monday their lease started, and he and Gunn spent the next few days setting up the security measures they needed for Angel. Wesley hired the same magic-user to place the protection on the windows, and Gunn got the same effect of feeling like he’d never seen the guy before. The barrier on the windows was based on momentum, Wesley said, and couldn’t be crossed by any object with momentum greater than that of an air molecule; no vampire or human was capable of moving slowly enough to get through it. Before the magic-user started work on the spell Wesley had opened all of the windows by an inch and had angled the blinds, and if they ever wanted to make any other change to the windows, they would have to get a magic-user in again to take the spell down for them.</p>
<p>For the door to Angel’s room, they fitted a spyhole, a lock and two bolts, they removed the doorknob from Angel’s side of the door and replaced it with a blank plate, and they covered Angel’s side of the door with crucifixes that were positioned so he shouldn’t be able to touch any part of the door. They didn’t expect to make much use of the spyhole, because while Gunn was shopping around for their TV and VCR he’d got the idea for something better that the spyhole: a video baby-monitor. He fixed the camera to the ceiling in the corner by the door, and set the screen on a high shelf just to the left of Angel’s door, where they could see it from almost any point in the living-room. Now Wesley would be able to check on Angel without having to leave his desk. They still had a use for the audio monitor since they could carry those receivers around with them, and Gunn set up a bracket in the centre of the ceiling ready to take the microphone when they finally moved it out of the other apartment.</p>
<p>They’d decided they could leave Angel out of the chains, but only if they made sure there was nothing in his room that Angelus could use as a weapon, or that he could use to try to break down the door or disable the monitors. This meant no furniture, not even the bed, no pictures on the walls, just the mattress and some clothes, and they’d have to give him a drawing pad and some crayons or charcoal (not pencils), and yes, they could safely let him have magazines and paperback books.</p>
<p>Without the bed, they would need another method of chaining him in place. They were still going to chain and gag him when he vamped up during a vision, and for all they knew there might be other times when they’d have to keep him chained for weeks. Gunn got two steel plates with rings attached, and fixed the plates to the floor along the wall opposite the windows, ten feet apart, and clearly within the camera’s field of view. With an eleven-foot chain between the two rings, they should be able to give Angel the same level of comfort and the same absence of options as he’d had when he was chained to the bed.</p>
<p>They’d agreed they also needed a form of restraint they could make Angelus put on himself while they stayed at a distance, and they weren’t happy with the idea of having him cuff himself to the bolt-rings, because it would be too difficult to tell from a distance whether he’d really closed the cuffs. Wesley and Gunn argued about designs for a couple of days, and then Wesley mentioned the problem to Angel, and Angel immediately suggested that they use manacles that were sprung at the hinges so that they would always be gaping open if they weren’t properly padlocked shut. They could use chains from the ceiling, which would give them the clearest view of everything that Angelus was doing, and make it more difficult for him to mislead them or to brace himself against a wall. Long chains, to within a foot or so of the floor, which would make it more difficult for him to try to use his weight to pull the bolts out of the ceiling. Long enough, too, that he could sit down, maybe even sleep: not out of consideration for Angelus, but for when he changed back. Gunn got the chains and manacles made, fixed them up and tried them out; and that was the last piece of work they needed to do on Angel’s room.</p>
<p>They moved Angel and his mattress between three and four on Wednesday morning. They’d got the mattress into the bed of the truck around midnight, and then they’d waited for Angel to reach a co-operative state, which would mean either lucid or in hell - and what they got was hell. They took him down with his hands chained behind his back and his coat draped over his shoulders, and secured him in the cab with the coat on his lap. Wesley rode in the bed of the truck to avoid crowding Angel, though he sat immediately behind him and whenever Gunn looked back he seemed to find Wesley with his hand raised, just about to touch the glass. How long was it gonna take for Wesley to accept that Angel couldn’t be reassured, not in hell, for him to really accept it so he’d stop always feeling like he should be trying?</p>
<p>At the other apartment they took Angel in first, padlocked him directly to the ring furthest from the door, locked and bolted the door, then went down to get the mattress. They put the mattress against the far wall, just to the right of the hanging chains and in clear view of both the camera and the spyhole, and Gunn laid Angel’s coat across it while Wesley put the magazine, books and drawing pad on the floor at the other side.</p>
<p>Wesley heated some blood then released Angel while Gunn stood guard with the holy-water. Wesley had hoped the routine would help Angel: being released, then fed, then left alone. Very hard to tell. Angel seemed numbly resigned, almost beyond fear. Gunn had seen it start a few minutes into the journey in the truck, when Angel had suddenly stopped reacting, stopped looking, and since then he’d either had his eyes closed, or had his gaze fixed on some point just in front of his knees.</p>
<p>Wesley stayed in the apartment to watch over Angel, particularly to see if he still had the same reliable patterns, and Gunn went back to the other apartment to finish getting things ready for the movers. Gunn took a last look at the screen on his way out, and saw that Angel was turned even further towards the wall, seemed curled even tighter. Should they have made him go over to the mattress? Probably, but it looked too late now.</p>
<p>They’d hired the movers to deal with the furniture, except for Angel’s bed which they were giving to the shelter, and the move was all finished by lunchtime. Their bedroom was large enough to take Angel’s wardrobe as well as their own, and they put Angel’s chair and side-table in the living-room, just to the left of his door and facing the screen. Gunn moved the boxes himself, then they both dismantled Angel’s bed and took it to the shelter – and apart from the spyhole still in the bedroom door, that left the old apartment clear of every trace of the three of them.</p>
<p>Gunn took the truck and went to Best Buy to get the TV/VCR combo that he’d picked out, while Wesley took the car and went to join Blockbuster and rent their first couple of movies. Gunn was expecting an art-house and maybe a Spike Lee, and was initially rather suspicious when Wesley arrived home with “Dumb and Dumber” and “Jaws”. OK, so he’d put it kind of strong about the sort of movie he and his crew had always been looking for when they needed to relax, but did Wesley really think he couldn’t cope with anything more serious? But he soon realised that Wesley hadn’t given nearly that much thought to what Gunn might enjoy (just to what he probably wouldn’t hate), and Wesley really did think that whole business in “Dumb and Dumber” with the bird’s head - from the way it was cut off, to taping it back on and selling the bird to a blind kid, to the fraud getting top-billing on “America’s Most Wanted” - well, he honestly did think it was comic genius.</p>
<p>As far as they could tell, Angel had been in hell all day. He’d slept several times, but each time he’d woken up terrified and bewildered. The arrival of the furniture had woken him from his first sleep and driven him to make his first real movement in the new room, scuttling to the corner furthest from the door, where he pressed his hands to the wall, hid his face, and trembled. Wesley turned the monitor off while the movers were present, but wasn’t surprised to find Angel still in the same position when they left. When Gunn had finished with the boxes they went in to install the audio monitor and to feed Angel again, and this time they did move him over to the mattress and gently pointed out his coat and showed him that he could read or draw if he wanted. Of course, he just hid, first curled against the wall, and then for all of the rest of the day under his coat.</p>
<p>Having Angel hidden under the coat meant they couldn’t see how much they were frightening him with the sound of the movies and of them laughing and arguing and jumping with shock. Gunn wondered a couple of times how much Wesley would have let the sight of Angel hold him back, how often he’d’ve been checking the monitor if Angel didn’t have the coat. Maybe without the coat, Gunn would never have discovered that his classy, movie-snob Wes could slide half-off the couch from laughing at a frozen-tongue gag. Way more fun to watch than the movie, but they’d have to talk soon about taking the coat away, about whether they should give Angel back his bedding after all. Because if Angel could use the coat to hide from them, so could Angelus.</p>
<p>They had the talk about the coat soon after they woke the next morning, and they decided to take it away as soon as possible. The sounds from Wesley’s audio receiver were unusual: grunts and gasps, and maybe glossy pages being turned. Surely even in hell Angel couldn’t get that scared by a magazine. Probably a hallucination, then.</p>
<p>No. A new treat, thanks to the video monitor: the sight of Angelus masturbating. He was lying on his back on the mattress with his trousers and shirt open, and with the magazine propped open against the wall. If Gunn hadn’t been able to see what Angelus was doing with his right hand he would have said the vampire was in the reverberation phase of a vision; there was the same power and the same appetite, lazy, cat-like, expressed through every inch of the body. Wesley blushed fiercely and fumbled, coughing, to turn off his receiver. Gunn watched for a few seconds longer, enough to see Angelus take his left hand off his nipple and move it to the magazine, not turning the page but stroking the surface, it looked like. Gunn did not ever want to know whose picture Angelus was looking at. The coat was nowhere in sight.</p>
<p>“So… be pretty sick, huh? T’get any kind of turned on from seein’ that.” Gunn had got turned on, enough that Wesley would be able to see it if he could bring himself to actually face Gunn.</p>
<p>Wesley gave an abrupt movement of his head, like he was trying to shake something off. He opened the refrigerator and got out a yoghurt. After he’d closed the door, he stood with his hand still pressed to the white surface and said, “We won’t do anything about it. Not from that.”</p>
<p>“Leave him with the magazine, you mean? Yeah, be petty to take it away. He’s stuck in jail. Wha’d’we expect him to do?”</p>
<p>Now Wesley turned to look at Gunn, but stepping backwards, too, till he was against the counter. Gunn couldn’t stop himself from glancing down, and he found exactly the bulge he’d expected. “No.” Wesley swallowed. “I mean we won’t touch each other. We won’t use it. Never, when it’s from seeing that.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded. “Yeah. We don’t need that. But y’know we can cope OK with admitting it? Don’t have to pretend we’re like… I dunno… monks or something. It don’t mean anything.”</p>
<p>“No. No, you’re right, it doesn’t, does it?” Wesley looked serious and thoughtful for a moment longer, then smiled suddenly at Gunn, and then stepped forward to the refrigerator again, to open the freezer compartment and take out the coffee. Gunn went looking for the filter papers, which turned out to be several cupboards away from where he remembered unpacking them.</p>
<p>They decided to use Wesley’s established system for the times when Angelus was being disgusting, and for the next half hour they kept the receiver turned off and their eyes away from the screen. When the time was up Wesley turned the sound back on first and they went over to check the screen. Angelus was asleep, lying neatly on his side. His face was human now and he looked very peaceful. The magazine wasn’t propped against the wall any more, but had fallen over onto the mattress. Wesley and Gunn looked at one another, sighed and shrugged, then turned away to get started on the day’s work. Wesley was back in front of the screen within a few minutes, though, sitting in Angel’s armchair with his translation work on the side-table; he wanted at least another day of checking that Angel’s patterns hadn’t changed with the move to the new apartment.</p>
<p>After another half hour, with Angel still asleep, Wesley suddenly said, “Of course, this does mean we’re going to have to work out a method for washing him. It has to be simpler to take him into the shower - maybe once a week - than to try to give him a sponge-bath in his room. It would probably be enough to chain his hands behind his back. We could chain him to the faucet. Though… at such close quarters… it would be best to hobble him, too.”</p>
<p>“How’s he gonna wash himself if - Oh. He’s not gonna wash himself. That kinda close quarters. I dunno. Lot to be said for sponge-baths. You really wanna go as far as takin’ a shower with him? After seein’ that?” Gunn pointed at the screen.</p>
<p>“We’d have to choose our time, obviously. But imagine trying to wash his hair in there. And if you think we won’t need to… I believe he’s quite capable of getting spunk in his hair.”</p>
<p>“Jeez, Wes!” Gunn raised his arm to ward off the image, then laughed, turned his hand, and slid it slowly across the top of his head and down to his neck. “Or we could give him some real grooming. Sharp as this. Never have to think about washing his hair then.”</p>
<p>Wesley needed several seconds to take that idea in, then he looked at Gunn’s scalp, then up at Angel on the screen, then back at Gunn. Then he shook his head, smiling. “I think if we did that to him, we’d have all aspects of Angel after our blood, not just Angelus. It could even be enough to make him fight back in hell.”</p>
<p>“You’re still set on this weekly shower, then?” Wesley shrugged. “You got any swimmin’ trunks?”</p>
<p>“No?” No, Wesley wouldn’t have. If he’d brought any from Sunnydale, he’d’ve got rid of them in the first month or so after he lost his arm.</p>
<p>“Well, get yourself some when you’re buyin’ the new suit. Wouldn’t put it past him to fake the whole vision craziness stunt just for the chance of seein’ you naked. But I’m onto him.” A silly joke but it did freak him out, just a bit, imagining Wesley and Angel naked in the shower, with Wesley soaping Angel all over. Not freaked-out jealous but… It was gonna be weird for all of them, probably for Angel most of all. Gunn’s instincts said they’d get through easier if they used all the ways they could find to keep a distance. Swimming trunks weren’t much, but one layer of distance was better than nothing.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Angel woke up very slowly after his neat, peaceful sleep, and Wesley had to study him carefully for several minutes before he was sure of his state. Angel didn’t seem aware of his surroundings, not of the magazines or the chains or the door, just of the fact that he’d woken up half-naked. Angelus would have enjoyed that, thought it was funny or sexy, but Angel acted shocked; he dressed himself quickly, acting panicked, then he turned to the wall and shivered. So he was in hell, and it would be safe (if not kind) to go in and take the coat.</p>
<p>Gunn unlocked the door while Wesley stood behind him watching the screen. Gunn had only opened the door a few inches when it snagged on something on the floor (the coat, he realised later), and then he heard Wesley’s shouted warning at the same time as the vampire’s snarl. Gunn jerked the door closed, slid the bolts, then turned to look at the screen. Angelus was showing his human face but he was halfway across the room - and then he was out of view, come directly under the camera. They heard his rage and frustration at the protection on the door, but then a thud and a brief sound of burning, and another thud and worse burning – and then a long howl of pain and fury. Silence for maybe ten seconds, then - so unexpected that Wesley and Gunn turned to stare at one another - ragged, exhausted breathing. Angelus never sounded like that: so human. Like he had hopes that could be bruised or even drowned. After maybe a minute there was a long, shaking sigh, and then slow, dragging steps away from the door. Wesley and Gunn looked back up at the screen, saw a bowed, beaten figure appear, and watched it make its way to the far side of the room and then slump down against the wall with its back to the windows and the mattress.</p>
<p>Gunn was the first to speak. “What’s your guess? Who the hell was that? Call me a sap, but that wasn’t Angelus.”</p>
<p>“No, I…” Wesley was shaking his head, then he shrugged and sighed. “I’m sorry, I really thought he was in hell.”</p>
<p>Gunn glanced up at the screen. “Well, he ain’t on vacation. Maybe we just found out that sometimes he does fight back. Lucky for us he was too angry to be smart about it.”</p>
<p>A slow nod. “Yes. I’ve seen him angry often enough as Angel. It’s… recognisable. But does it mean we should be chaining him after all, if we’re not even safe when he’s in hell?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Bit drastic, when he didn’t even get close. Sure we look out for any sign of him gettin’ smarter, but that don’t look like the direction he’s headed.”</p>
<p>They went training that evening. They’d done very little training since Angelus had appeared that Sunday, and they were going to have to train every day from now on to get and keep in shape for Yan and her colleagues. This meant they would be leaving Angel alone for at least two hours every evening. As far as Wesley knew, Angel had only ever had four visions while he was on his own, and those had all been in the early days, when he was lucid much more often, and when he could give a full account of a vision afterwards, analyse it, even drive to the address. Now, if they missed the reverberation phase, if Angel didn’t manage to find the drawing pad on his own, then they might not even realise he’d had a vision, they might mistake it for a hallucination. Yes, they’d already had to leave him alone several times since he’d got so much worse - for over eight hours on the night of the Hollywood-and-Wilcox vision – but leaving him for hours every day, that was asking too much of their luck.</p>
<p>Wesley put the problem to Gunn on their way to the training session, and Gunn immediately suggested getting a voice-activated recorder and setting it next to Wesley’s audio receiver whenever they had to leave the apartment. Wesley had had the same idea, so they simply agreed to buy one the next day, after Gunn had done some research on features and prices.</p>
<p>After training Gunn dropped Wesley off at the apartment and went to Caritas: his first Thursday there in nearly a month. The boys were very pleased to see him and the first half hour was solid catching-up. They asked about the move, about the new apartment, about how Wesley was doing and Wesley’s sick friend. Gunn told them some of the truth about Angel, using Wesley’s story about the head-injury and the violence and mood-swings.</p>
<p>“But we’re… We’re gettin’ better at predicting his moods. And the way we’ve got his new room set up, with the bars on the windows and the locks and everything, well, we don’t have to worry about him nearly as much. Or about the neighbours bein’ bothered by the noise.”</p>
<p>From the amount of questions the boys had, you’d think they’d never met anyone before who’d ever moved apartments in L.A. OK, maybe Piriti and Matt hadn’t ever moved, but Grouw certainly had, and he was acting just as curious as the others. Suddenly, looking around the table at the three very-different faces, all with the same alert expression, Gunn got the feeling that there was really only one question that they wanted to ask: is the apartment a two-bedroom, or a three? They’d been talking about it, the three of them. Must’ve decided they couldn’t ask outright, would just wait for Gunn to let something slip.</p>
<p>So. Was it time to tell them? By the look of them, they already thought they knew, and it wasn’t gonna freak them out. They never talked about sex, the four of them, which was kinda odd, now Gunn thought about it. When he was alone with Matt or with Grouw and the duals, then, yeah, the subject of dating had come up, like it would in your average conversation. So the difference when it was the four of them, was that because of Piriti, the way he was with his brother? Or because the three boys hadn’t all figured out before, what they thought about Wesley and Gunn?</p>
<p>So again, was it time to tell them? Maybe. After he’d come up with some general comment to make about three-bedrooms, seen if they looked surprised enough that he could be completely sure about what they’d been thinking. Gunn soon decided that his best approach would be to ask something about Grouw’s apartment (since Grouw was the one with the two roommates), but he got no further before the boys got their song called. “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” was their newest song and this time they did want to talk it over afterwards, or talk it over with Gunn anyway, not so much between themselves. Maybe they’d missed having him as an audience, though they weren’t short of people now telling them what they’d done right with the song, and those were all people who sang, which you’d think would mean more.</p>
<p>When the visitors had stopped coming to the table and there was a proper gap between songs, Gunn said, “Y’know, I’ve just now thought… You guys’ve never asked me when I’m gonna sing somethin’. Was me, I’d’a made it a runnin’ joke.”</p>
<p>All three looked surprised, then looked at one another, and then Matt said, “We just figured you didn’t wanna be read.”</p>
<p>“Red? Not like I’m gonna turn beetroot, am I?”</p>
<p>Matt looked even more surprised, blinked hard. “You hadn’t heard about the host?” He gestured towards the bar, where the host was standing talking to the previous singer. “How he can read people’s futures when they’re singing?”</p>
<p>Piriti said, “Well, it’s more guiding them to the right path. Giving warnings. Or if it’s worth sticking with something. He never acts like it’s cut-and-dried.”</p>
<p>Matt nodded, agreeing Piriti had put it better. “And some people just never want him doin’ that, so they don’t sing. We guessed that was you.”</p>
<p>“But you don’t mind?”</p>
<p>Grouw shrugged. “We never tick the box. Don’t care what he sees, long as I never hear about it.”</p>
<p>Piriti again: “There’s a box when you fill in the request-sheets for the songs. Whether you want him to tell you afterwards what he’s seen.”</p>
<p>“Oh!” Gunn pointed to the bar, but without looking around. “And I was thinkin’ he was giving singin’ tips.”</p>
<p>Matt said, “He does that too, but not for free and not during club-hours. So when are you gonna sing?”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head. “Nah, never thought I would, now I know I won’t.” He already had his share of vague warnings, he had no doubts about his “path”, and he didn’t want anyone making judgements on him and Wesley for what they were doing to Angel - because that’s what it would come down to.</p>
<p>When Gunn arrived back at the apartment, Wesley was in the armchair with a book and a glass of Madeira, and Angel was having a hallucination about being tortured. Wesley had turned the sound off, but they didn’t need a microphone to hear this one.</p>
<p>“Or it may just be a nightmare. I’m not sure. He definitely dreams, I’ve been seeing it. This started fairly quietly with just some muttering and twitching, and I’m not entirely sure that he’s woken up.”</p>
<p>“This is from hell?”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “Or his imagination.”</p>
<p>Gunn put his hand on Wesley’s shoulder, standing nearly behind him, having to be careful of the side-table. “You OK, Wes? You know you don’t have to watch.”</p>
<p>Wesley turned to look up at him. “I haven’t been. This only started a few minutes ago. And…” A shrug. “I have nightmares myself. I think it’s just a nightmare. They never really last long. Whatever it feels like when you’re inside one.”</p>
<p>The nightmare was over by the time they went to bed, and the end seemed to prove that it had been a nightmare. Angel had come awake in a flurry of panic, and then when he saw where he was he sank into an exhausted despair, too exhausted for him even to try to hide. Wesley found that sight much more difficult than the nightmare, and Gunn closed Wesley’s book, finished Wesley’s wine, and took Wesley quickly to bed.</p>
<p>On Friday morning, Wesley waited for Angel to fall asleep and then went out to buy the recorder and return the video tapes, expecting that Angel would still be asleep when he returned so he wouldn’t miss anything except a few quiet signs of dreams. Gunn was working on some research at the table, and with the receiver over on Wesley’s desk, he didn’t realise that Angel had woken up until he glanced at the screen and found that Angel wasn’t lying on the mattress any more, but was standing a few feet away from one of the windows, hand held up like he was testing the barrier. Gunn left the table and went to stand in front of the screen, and he saw Angel turn his head sharply at the sounds of movement. Angel stared at the door for a long time, and Gunn couldn’t see terror, or rage, or calculation - more… troubled thought, uncertainty. Was this Angel? Was he finally lucid? Gunn decided not to try to talk to him to find out, but to leave that for Wesley; Angel hadn’t known Gunn in weeks, and an approach from a stranger was about the surest way to drive Angel into retreat.</p>
<p>Over the next ten or fifteen minutes, Gunn watched Angel slowly explore the room, heard him give a grunt of recognition when he found the protection on the door, heard him run his hands over the walls. This Angel saw the camera and the microphone, touched and tested the rings and the chains, moved the mattress. He looked often towards the door and the camera, and his expression of puzzled apprehension was always the same. Gunn decided the search must be finished when he saw Angel return to the books and the magazine. Angel picked each one up in turn, smelled them, felt them inside and out, exactly like he’d done before, about five minutes earlier. But then he knelt on the floor, his knees nearly touching the edge of the mattress, picked up the magazine and opened it so it was half on his knees, half on the mattress, and then he started to read, from the first page, and with great concentration.</p>
<p>Gunn watched the reading for a couple of minutes, saw that Angel was reacting to what he read, bending closer over the pages, getting puzzled enough to need to drag his hand over his head. But it was obviously going to be more of the same for a long time, so Gunn went back to his research and checked the screen less and less often as it just kept on showing him that he’d been right.</p>
<p>“I think he’s lucid.”</p>
<p>Wesley dropped his bag on the couch and hurried over to the screen. “He’s reading! With both hands. How long has he been awake?”</p>
<p>Gunn joined Wesley and brought him up to date with what Angel had been doing. Angel was reacting strongly to the sound of them talking, turning to stare at the door, then half-rising so the magazine slid off his knees then onto the floor. He looked afraid, and sad, and resigned. Gunn thought he saw Angel’s lips move, but it must have been less than a whisper. Maybe a minute of the staring, then Angel sank back to his knees and picked up the magazine, but with his body turned now, angled away from the door.</p>
<p>“You haven’t tried to talk to him?”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head. “Your department. Definitely.”</p>
<p>Wesley took a deep breath then knocked on the door. “Angel? It’s Wesley. Can I come in?” No response. “I know you’re busy reading, but can I come in?”</p>
<p>A long pause, then Angel slowly put the magazine down closed on the mattress, then got to his feet and turned to face the door, all in a single, smooth motion. “Will you bring Doyle in, too?”</p>
<p>Wesley recoiled in shock, but recovered quickly. “Doyle isn’t here, Angel. He’s gone. I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>“Just you, then.” The tone was forbiddingly flat, but it still sounded like permission. Wesley unlocked the door, opened it slowly, took one last look at the screen, then stepped inside. Gunn had moved away from Angel’s line of sight, and on the screen there was just Angel staring, forlorn, with Wesley not yet in view of the camera.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry, Angel.”</p>
<p>“I heard him at the computer. He was always at the computer. How long has it been?”</p>
<p>Wesley swallowed. “He died over a year ago. Fourteen months.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded several times. “And you?” A slight frown. “You must have died after him. But… it’s not as clear.”</p>
<p>“You -” Gunn saw Wesley take a step backwards, staggering like he’d been hit, but then he caught himself, stood straight again. “You think I’m a ghost?”</p>
<p>“No. No, I know this is a hallucination. And him. But - No, it can’t be only a year. Of course you don’t really know. But I think it’s much longer.”</p>
<p>Wesley was walking towards Angel, hand held out. “No, I do know that it was fourteen months. Because I’m real. I’m not dead, Angel. I’m here.”</p>
<p>Angel didn’t touch the hand Wesley was offering, but instead seized Wesley by the upper-arm - hard, judging by Wesley’s yelp - then buried his face in Wesley’s shirt, far too close to Wesley’s neck. Gunn grabbed the holy-water and ran into the room, but Angel was already drawing back.</p>
<p>“You still use the same detergent. And that lemon soap. And you still eat too much pepper. But there’s someone else. A man?”</p>
<p>“Yes, that’s Charles.” Wesley pulled his arm free and turned towards Gunn. “Charles is always at the computer. It was him you heard.”</p>
<p>Angel looked at Gunn without any trace of recognition, just for a few seconds then back at Wesley. “He thought I was attacking you.”</p>
<p>“Sure looked that way.”</p>
<p>“Would I do that?” Still to Wesley. “I can’t… I know I’m not… who I was. But I’m not Angelus, am I?”</p>
<p>“Not right now, but sometimes you are. That’s why we have to have the room like this. I know it’s terrible. I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>Angel looked at the room, to right, then to left. “How long have you had to keep me here?”</p>
<p>“This is our new apartment. We only moved in two days ago.”</p>
<p>“Two days?” Angel looked stunned. “Not ten years?”</p>
<p>“We moved in on Wednesday the 14<sup>th</sup> of February. Today is the Friday.”</p>
<p>“And the year?”</p>
<p>“2001.”</p>
<p>“So that magazine… I thought that must be… I thought that didn’t mean anything.”</p>
<p>“No, it’s the latest issue. Angel, you must be hungry. I’ll go and get you some blood. It’ll only take a few minutes. We’ll shut the door, but I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Angel nodded, and Gunn and Wesley left the room together and locked the door.</p>
<p>“I’d’ve got the blood for you.” Gunn had followed Wesley to the kitchen.</p>
<p>“I know. I needed to get out. My brain’s still reeling from the ten years.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded. “Did he hurt you? Your arm.”</p>
<p>“I’ll have bruises. But I was expecting to have to spend the next half-hour arguing with him about whether or not I was a hallucination. I think I got off lightly.”</p>
<p>Angel had gone back to kneeling with the magazine. He didn’t stand up when Wesley returned, just reached up to take the beaker. Wesley knelt too, along the edge of the mattress closest to the door.</p>
<p>“Thank you.” Angel handed the empty breaker to Wesley, who put it on the floor.</p>
<p>“You’re welcome. Would it be stupid to ask you how much you remember?”</p>
<p>A sigh. “That I’d been getting worse. Much worse. Dangerous. Hallucinating. I knew there’d been Doyle. Then you. But I - I didn’t know who’d come after you. How many, or - Are we still in L.A.?”</p>
<p>“Yes, we’re in Lawndale. The Thomas Guide’s down in the car, but I’ll show you tomorrow. We’ve only moved five miles.”</p>
<p>“Lawndale…” Angel was shaking his head. “I can’t even - I should know Charles. Shouldn’t I?”</p>
<p>“He’s been with us since October. But there’s no ‘should’. I don’t expect you to remember anything.”</p>
<p>“But what about this?” Angel pushed the magazine at Wesley, across the mattress. “Should I know all of these people?”</p>
<p>“God, no! It’s a celebrity gossip magazine. You - find them funny sometimes. It was a stupid thing to give you now, I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>“So I don’t know…” Angel reached over for the magazine, flicked through it and found the page quickly. “So I don’t know this… ‘Cordy’?”</p>
<p>“Oh, Cordelia! Yes, you do know her. You knew her in Sunnydale for several years. Before she got famous.”</p>
<p>“In Sunnydale.” Angel was nodding. “Yes, I can see…” He trailed off then pushed the magazine at Wesley again. “So all this is real? Everything in there?”</p>
<p>“Um… It’s a very selective view of life, and presented in a deliberately misleading way. But it’s not a hallucination. Or a trick. Was that what you thought?”</p>
<p>“Something like that.”</p>
<p>“I’ll bring you our newspaper instead.” Wesley put the magazine on the floor next to the beaker. “Unless you’d like something else. I can get different books.”</p>
<p>Angel turned to pick up the books and looked at them front and back. “I need to know where I am. When. Will these be good books?”</p>
<p>“Probably not. I’ll get you some books about the last few years in L.A. I’ll get them for tomorrow if that’s alright. If you’ll be OK with the newspaper for now.” Angel nodded and Wesley picked up the magazine and the beaker and got to his feet. “I’ll go and get it.”</p>
<p>Wesley took Angel all of the sections of the L.A. Times, and Angel ran into problems from the headline of the first section. “Bush? Bush is President? But wasn’t there… I remember Arkansas.”</p>
<p>Wesley explained, and that took some time. The other articles on the front page were about proposed tax cuts, poisoned whales, a coalition in Israel, and grocery chains hiring union labour. Angel coped with those fairly smoothly, but then page three had the California energy crisis and Wesley was into another long explanation, and Angel was frowning and looking to Gunn like he was getting a headache. And then there were three stories in a row about legal disputes - over trying juveniles as adults, over distributing money among 300 high-schools, and over placard fees for disabled drivers - and Gunn wasn’t surprised when Angel didn’t turn over for page four, but sat back shaking his head.</p>
<p>“I can’t. There are too many… pieces. I can’t put them together. With the magazine I didn’t - That just had one story.” Gunn thought Angel had that right. Dresses and parties and who’s hot and who’s doing who. That one story. Same on every page.</p>
<p>“Yes, it must seem fragmented. You don’t have to read every article, though. Just what interests you.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know what interests me. I hardly recognise anything. Just you. And Cordelia. And Doyle’s computer. I want the magazine back.”</p>
<p>“Of course. Charles? Could you bring us the magazine that’s on my desk?” Gunn handed the magazine directly to Angel, who wouldn’t quite look at him but did thank him.</p>
<p>Wesley said, “I hope that will help you remember, if you’re not sure where you are the next time you wake up.”</p>
<p>“Will I know you’re real?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know.” Gunn could hear that Wesley was smiling. “I’m not in any magazines like Cordelia. I don’t know what proof I could give you.”</p>
<p>Angel was looking at Wesley, from head to knees and back again, very serious. “Your shirt? I remember your shirt.”</p>
<p>“My shirt? This shirt?” Gunn could imagine the bemused look on Wesley face, exactly; also knew to the second when Wesley was going to give that shrug. “Well, yes, maybe that would work.” Wesley lifted up slightly to pull the shirt out of the waistband, and then started undoing the buttons. Gunn had to close his eyes. Not jealous. Not quite jealous. But he remembered how much it had meant to him when Wesley was ready to let him see. Angel had already seen, though. Seen everything. Angelus too. And of course Wesley would never blame Angel for what Angelus had seen.</p>
<p>Gunn opened his eyes just as Wesley lifted the shirt off his left shoulder. Wesley didn’t try to deal with the last stage himself, but held his right arm out to Angel, and Angel took the hint and pulled at the cuff. When Angel had the shirt in his hands he pressed it briefly to his face, then nodded at Wesley and put the shirt down on top of the magazine.</p>
<p>Wesley stood up. “I’ll just be next door. Call me if you need anything. Want to ask anything. I’ll leave the newspaper. You might find something. I don’t know, maybe a review of a book you’ll want to read?”</p>
<p>“Don’t get me any books about the energy crisis.” Not a joke, but an urgent order. Gunn guessed he really didn’t want to feel that headache coming back.</p>
<p>Another smile. “I won’t.” Then Wesley left the bedroom, closing and locking the door behind him.</p>
<p>When Wesley came back into the living-room with a fresh shirt on, Gunn said, “I could do you the book of all time about nightmare roommates. ‘I saw him sniff my boyfriend’s shirt’. God, they’d love me on the daytime shows with that.”</p>
<p>“If they’d believe you. And wouldn’t they want the two of us along for you to shout at? How much shouting would you need to do?”</p>
<p>“Dunno yet. Later. When we’re done with work. Before training.”</p>
<p>Later was when they were walking down to the truck. Wesley said, “Is it time for the shouting, then? About Angel and the shirt.”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head. “I’m not angry. Turns out. Just feel… Don’t even know what I’d call it. Of course you have to… Course you do. Just hard to watch.”</p>
<p>“I can imagine. It doesn’t mean anything to him, you know? Probably less than those pictures of Cordelia. He’s beyond being able to understand how it would seem to a human.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Wes? If somebody gave you a ring, would you wear it?”</p>
<p>Wesley looked thoughtful. “I’ve never worn a ring. I used to have nightmares about industrial machinery.” A lopsided smile. “Which could be called misdirection.”</p>
<p>“But would you wear one now?”</p>
<p>“I don’t see why not.”</p>
<p>“Yeah? OK.”</p>
<p>After training Gunn dropped Wesley off at the nearest Barnes and Noble and went to Blockbuster (“Terminator 2” and “Limbo”) and then to get beer and curry to go. Wesley was waiting for him outside the bookstore, well into the first chapter of the twenty-year-old cop novel that he’d somehow come away with.</p>
<p>“Thought the idea was to bring him up-to-date.”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “I don’t think he’ll notice. And I think he’ll like Wambaugh. I didn’t realise until tonight that they were all set in L.A. I would have sworn blind that ‘The Choirboys’ was New York. But that’s too violent for him, and very fragmented as well. As far as I can remember ‘The Delta Star’ is quite tame. And it’s held together by a detectable story-line, which seems to be what he wants.”</p>
<p>“What else you get?”</p>
<p>“A travel book on L.A. by an English writer. From ‘93. The girl recommended it. Maybe because of my accent, but she wasn’t pushing that aspect. We’ll see.”</p>
<p>The tape had recorded only a few minutes: some mutterings and sounds of restless movement, then shocked or panicked gasps followed by scurrying, and then the gasps became muffled and must soon have dropped below the level for the recorder. The tape confirmed what they could see from the screen: that Angel had woken up in hell and gone to hide in the corner. There had been no vision.</p>
<p>On Saturday morning Wesley went shopping again, this time for a new navy-blue suit and some Speedos, and, again, Angel woke up lucid while Wesley was gone. With the shirt and the magazine right there under his hand when he woke up, Angel seemed to know immediately where he was. He rolled off the mattress and onto his feet, looked up into the camera, and called for Wesley.</p>
<p>Gunn opened the door and saw Angel’s smile turn instantly to a frown, first of puzzlement, then of concentration. “Wesley had to go out, Angel. He should be back in half an hour. I can get you your blood if you’re hungry.” Angel nodded slowly, still frowning, and Gunn closed the door and went to the kitchen.</p>
<p>Angel had retreated to the far wall and that damned magazine. “I’m not in there, Angel, if that’s what you’re looking for. My name’s Gunn. I live with Wesley.” Charles was for family and for Wesley, not for Angel. “Look, I’ll write it down for you.” The pad was half-hidden in the jumble of newspaper; looked like the whole pile had been thrown at the window. Gunn waited until Angel had finished drinking before he passed him the pad. “See: ‘Gunn’, with two ens. D’you want me to take the newspaper away? Wesley got you some books about L.A. Maybe you’re ready for those.”</p>
<p>A pause, then: “I think so.”</p>
<p>Gunn got rid of the newspaper then came back with the books. “There’s a cop novel and a travel book. Wesley should be back soon.”</p>
<p>Angel didn’t seem able to settle to anything. Each time Gunn looked up from searching for a ring for Wesley, he found Angel doing something different: drawing on his pad, or examining one of the books, or looking out of the window, or running Wesley’s shirt through his fingers. Finally Angel went back to the pad and to his favourite corner, and was asleep there, propped against the wall, when Wesley came back.</p>
<p>Gunn was out digging with the boys all afternoon. Wesley was supposed to be treating himself to some reading but when Gunn got home he found Wesley hard at work at his desk, surrounded by old case-files and by sheets and sheets of neatly-written lists.</p>
<p>“Hey! New case come in? Or you had an idea for gettin’ Angel Investigations some more work?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head, looking discouraging and grumpy. “He had two more of those message visions.”</p>
<p>“Two? Jeez. Same message twice?”</p>
<p>“No.” Wesley got up and walked over to the table, where he’d laid out sheets of drawing paper, arranged in two groups. “This is the first one.”</p>
<p>A young man at a card-table, candles on the table and metal tankards. The same man coming out of an old house at night, face surprised as he looked out of the drawing, like he’d just seem something unexpected; and in the house, a woman just turning away from the window. And then the man dead, eyes open, throat torn, arranged sitting-up against the door of the house… for that woman to find?</p>
<p>“It’s Angelus, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>“It must be. I think it’s Ireland; his accent got very strong. Probably around 1820. He was asleep when the vision hit. And also when the second vision hit about four hours later. He’s still feeling the effects of the second one. I turned the sound off.”</p>
<p>On the screen, Angel was pressing himself to the wall, shaking his head, whispering urgently. Gunn could hear the rhythms of Angel’s voice, but none of the words. The second set of drawings showed the outside of an ordinary house, number 25, looked like L.A. to Gunn; and then the inside, where there hardly seemed space in the living-room for the huge egg and the hungry mass of slime and claws and fangs erupting out of it.</p>
<p>“This is now, right? I mean, this was a mission once.”</p>
<p>“A Tahval demon at 25 Cabrillo. I didn’t see it, or the house. He refused to let me go with him. But I remember the address. I found pictures of the Tahval.”</p>
<p>“Why’d he refuse?”</p>
<p>“I’d just have got in the way. I still had my stitches in. He wouldn’t have trusted me to wield anything heavier than a stapler.”</p>
<p>“So he went on his own?” Hard to imagine now.</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “He came back drenched in… Tahval fluids. Clawmarks right through his coat and his shirt. Said that if I could learn some basic moves with an axe… If I convinced him I’d know the right time to use the moves… Then maybe it would be worth taking me along. So that’s how it started, really. Anyway…” Wesley turned back to his desk. “I decided to make a list of all of his visions. With the address, and the other things he might say or put in the drawing. Details of the location. Description of the demon. The victim. So if he has one when you’re here on your own, then you should be able to recognise it. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some.” A quick smile. “But he’ll probably have them again just to remind me.”</p>
<p>“OK. Good idea. And you haven’t tried to guess for a second about the messages, have you?”</p>
<p>“Not for a second. No.”</p>
<p>“Hmm. Angelus leaving one of his… surprises. Think we’re already pretty-much primed for that. And then the vision that got him to start training with you. Telling us to be careful with the duals?”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “Take as long as you like over that. I’m going to get showered and changed for our date.”</p>
<p>They ate at the table, with the computer moved onto the floor. Angel seemed to be slowly falling asleep and they both ignored him easily. Over coffee, with a switch to Gunn’s choice of music, they held hands and argued about whether they should have saved “Terminator 2” for this proper date, rather than taking a risk on “Limbo” which neither of them had seen. Gunn had needed winding down the night before but he didn’t now, and besides he’d chosen “Limbo” because it was by the same director as “Passion Fish”, so it was obviously a Wesley-date movie.</p>
<p>Suddenly Wesley flexed his fingers against Gunn’s then drew his hand back slightly. “You’re sizing me up for a ring, aren’t you?” Not turned self-conscious, just curious.</p>
<p>“Um… Didn’t know I was, not just then, but yeah, been thinkin’ about it a lot today.”</p>
<p>“What type of ring?”</p>
<p>“A signet-ring? Really simple, hardly know it was there. I’d show you first.”</p>
<p>Wesley gave a slight smile and pushed his hand back towards Gunn, right over Gunn’s palm until his fingertips were stroking Gunn’s wrist. “Should I get you one too?”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head firmly. “I don’t need one from you. And I’m guessin’… you don’t feel like you need anythin’ from me, either.”</p>
<p>Wesley frowned slightly, thinking, then shrugged and nodded. “I’ll be very glad to wear it, but I already know how you feel about me.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Same here.” A harsh sigh. “Thing is, it’s not about you and me, me and you, it’s about Angel. And -” Another sigh. “And how I can’t settle on any one way of lookin’ at him. Just can’t seem to. ‘specially where you’re concerned, how he acts with you. I get – I dunno, whenever he does somethin’ new like with your shirt. Or makin’ us think about how we’re gonna havta shower him. That’d be bad enough, freak me out for the rest of the day. But on top of that I get half the other stuff comin’ back, from the last times he freaked me out. So I got six different feelings churnin’ round and I dunno what they’re gonna end up makin’ me do.”</p>
<p>Wesley’s hand had tightened around Gunn’s wrist, and he looked very watchful. “Like the time you asked me if I ever wanted to kill Angelus?”</p>
<p>“No, I – Damn, that seems a long time ago. Angelus, I got sorted. Turn the sound off him, shut him out. It’s Angel. Where we havta be in there with him. Havta be close so we c’n help, but… God, he wants the weirdest kinda help. Your shirt. Seein’ him with your shirt…”</p>
<p>Wesley had relaxed his grip and was nodding. “Of course. How are you supposed to react to something that? To decide how to react. But why a ring? How would that… help you deal with him?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Hopin’ it’ll stop me from yellin’ at him to back off, get the fuck away from you. ‘cos… ‘cos I got there first, I got somethin’s always closer to you than he’s gonna get. So that’s the first thing I’ll think when he freaks me out, and it’ll slow me down, give me time to stop from doin’ somethin’ stupid.”</p>
<p>Wesley smiled, and slid his hand back down to link his fingers with Gunn’s. “Your mantra. So it would be the focus for your mantra.”</p>
<p>“I guess. Not like I thought it through like that, I just – Well, I was thinkin’ at Christmas that someday I’d like to get you a gift you wouldn’t drink up, somethin’ you’d always have. On your hand would be best ‘cos God, I love your hand. But I couldn’t see you bein’ glad to wear anything like that, just didn’t seem like you. ‘n’ then Angel’s suddenly too close ‘n’ wham! Somethin’ in me’s goin’, ‘The ring. Get the ring. You need the ring.’ “ He laughed and shook his head. “Now that, that’s the mantra.”</p>
<p>A brief smile, then slowly: “No, it wouldn’t have seemed like me. Not back then. But now… I think that could work for me too. My version of your mantra. That I’ve always got you that close to me. Keeping him at a manageable distance.” A pause. “Do I make it more difficult for you? To decide what to think about him. Am I… being inconsistent? How often am I being thoughtless with you?”</p>
<p>“Man, you’re bein’ totally consistent. You take care of him, you havta take care of him. ‘n’ bein’ you, you have to do everythin’ you can. I’d hate to see you any different. Would help, though, if you’d go into a jewellery story and find out your size.”</p>
<p>“Monday. I’ll do it first thing on Monday.”</p>
<p>Gunn lifted Wesley’s hand and kissed his fingers, and then they were getting to their feet and heading for the bedroom. They sucked one another off, on the bed but still dressed, then lay mostly in silence, just a few stray remarks about the ways the date would have been different if they’d been able to go out.</p>
<p>“Limbo” was set in Alaska, which mostly meant lots of white to Gunn, in every sense. He’d never seen the point of “Northern Exposure”, couple of times he’d half-watched it, but he somehow kept coming across kids who thought Alaska was the answer, where they could really get their start. Weird. Because it was the opposite of L.A.? Seemed almost to see it as a bonus that you couldn’t sleep rough up there.</p>
<p>At the start, Gunn was seeing the movie mostly as a background for those kids, but then there was a scene with the woman singing in a bar, and he was surprised to recognise the song: it was “Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night”, which Piriti would usually start at some point in the digging, but Gunn had never heard it all the way through before, or with music. After that the movie was still slow, but Gunn had got properly interested in where it was going.</p>
<p>“Wesley?” The receiver was on the coffee table. Angel was looking up at the camera, all four books in his hands. “Wesley?”</p>
<p>Wesley got up immediately, and Gunn stopped the movie and followed him. “Make sure it’s him, first. Don’t just go in there.”</p>
<p>“Angel, I’m here. Do you need something?”</p>
<p>“Wesley.” Angel held the books up. “Did you give me these? What do they mean?”</p>
<p>Wesley opened the door. “They mean that I know you sometimes like to read. For interest and to pass the time. Is there something you’d prefer?”</p>
<p>Angel looked down at the books. “Which one would pass the time?”</p>
<p>“Well, they all would. ‘The Delta Star’ would probably make it pass most quickly. Are you bored?”</p>
<p>Angel looked at Wesley like he didn’t understand the question. Then: “What’s the delta star?”</p>
<p>“It’s just something in the story. You’re not expected to know. You find out as you read the story.”</p>
<p>Angel let the other three books fall to the floor and opened the cop novel. After a few seconds, frowning: “When was it Mother’s Day? Do they know I - What’s the bad check? It says everyone was watching it.”</p>
<p>“The bad check is a police officer. The other cops are watching him because they’re expecting him to lose his temper. But I only know that because I read the same chapter yesterday. Again, it’s something you find out as you read the story.”</p>
<p>Angel frowned down at the page again then dropped the book. “I want something I know.”</p>
<p>“Well… come and see what you can find on the bookshelves. But if you already know it, maybe it wouldn’t be very interesting for you to read. You wouldn’t know anything in the hardback books. There’s no point in looking at them. Just try the paperback books like this one.”</p>
<p>Angel took out six books in turn, read the first page, and then would have dropped the book if Wesley hadn’t been standing ready. After those six Angel suddenly seemed to lose focus, reached for a seventh book without looking at it, and turned abruptly and went to his room. Just like the good old days. Gunn locked the door and he and Wesley returned to the film.</p>
<p>“Wesley. Tell me about the bad check.” An order. Looked like Angel hadn’t lost focus, just taken a five-minute sulk.</p>
<p>Wesley sighed. “Don’t wait for me. I think this could go on for hours.”</p>
<p>Gunn let the movie play on but he was watching the other screen instead, was tuned in only to the sounds from the receiver. Angel wanted Wesley to read with him, explain every last fucking detail of that stupid cop novel. Wesley was a saint. Or a sucker. Or both. Eventually Gunn turned the receiver off. He tried to watch the movie but soon gave up and rewound it, channel-hopped for a while, then turned the TV off and went to set the computer back up on the table. Wesley and Angel didn’t seem to hear any of the clattering from the living-room, laughing too hard at some cop-joke; well, Wesley was doing the laughing, Angel was just smiling slightly. They were sitting together against the wall, right knees raised at exactly the same angle, and with the book spread open on Wesley’s knee. Busy day for Wesley’s new suit.</p>
<p>At 10:22, Angel had yet another vision - a new one, about a pair of vampires working a nightclub on La Brea, going for couples. Identifying the vampires was easy, getting them away from the crowds for an inconspicuous staking was more difficult, since Gunn and Wesley were not the type of couple they were looking for, and since Wesley seemed to have no idea how to behave naturally in a nightclub. Of course, with that empty sleeve he was always going to look out of place, but couldn’t he find some middle-ground between acting all stuffy and disapproving (OK, pompous) and acting like he couldn’t believe his luck? Gunn could see that it was kind of funny (and Wesley a smooth operator? no way), but he was glad that he’d first met Wes far, far from a nightclub.</p>
<p>They went training first thing on Sunday morning then watched the rest of the film over a very slow breakfast. Strange film. A bummer, really. Failure after failure, everything getting worse. And then refusing to give you an ending, just cutting it off, leaving you hanging - in Limbo, as Wesley pointed out. Gunn didn’t hate the movie but he thought they’d have had a very different fuck the night before, going to bed after seeing that. Maybe Angel had done them a favour, sending them out to get covered in vamp-dust.</p>
<p>Rondell called at midday to say that the crew would be going to Venice for the game of pickup, and Wesley nodded at Gunn to go ahead. There were no digs about coming back to the crew and a couple of the kids even asked how he was doing (“keepin’ busy”). It was a good game.</p>
<p>Wesley and Angel were reading again when Gunn got back to the apartment, sitting in the same position against the wall, but Angel was losing focus by then and Wesley soon left.</p>
<p>“How is he today?”</p>
<p>“The same. He’s following the story quite well, though he keeps on forgetting things. I have to remind him or explain at least twice every page.”</p>
<p>“Not gonna be readin’ on his own, then?”</p>
<p>“Not this week.”</p>
<p>“You talk about anything else?”</p>
<p>“Not really. I told him about the visions but… the book seems more real to him at the moment. And the ‘message’ visions… I shouldn’t have bothered. Far too confusing.”</p>
<p>Later, they watched Angel wake up for a brief hallucination that Wesley said came straight out of the book - a dead dog in a grocery bag, sent as a threat. After Angel had switched off, Wesley went to make a pot of tea, and once he’d settled again on the couch he said to Gunn, “Have you ever noticed how all of the ‘message’ visions hit while he’s asleep? I can’t think of a single ‘mission’ vision like that.”</p>
<p>“ ‘nother part of the message?”</p>
<p>Slowly: “I don’t know. I’m almost wondering if they’re actually another type of hallucination. Brought on by his dreams. When he dreams about a vision, it triggers the seer part of him.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but what about Angelus? Those were never missions. Nothing there for the seer to remember. Helluva message, though.”</p>
<p>“I think… his feelings when he remembers what Angelus did are the same as his feelings when he’s having a vision. That he’s desperate to stop it happening. And it’s as urgent and immediate as the visions because in both cases he’s right there. He’s inside it. It’s not impossible that his brain could take those feelings and generate a vision out of them. I’d like to think we did get sent a warning about Angelus, but it might just have been an accident, caused by his brain-damage. In the same way that Angelus was able to appear like that - because of the brain-damage. It might not be a message. Not a coincidence, either. More, inevitable. We were just lucky in the order in which the effects occurred.”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged, not in any rush to get rid of the idea of the messages. Especially not for blind luck. “Don’t see how you could tell either way.”</p>
<p>“No, neither do I. But I’d take any bet you want that no message vision will ever start when he’s awake. Or if it does, it will be directly connected to what he’s just been reading.”</p>
<p>“No bet. The two of you’d fake one and spend the money on more books.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Their first training session with the duals was on Tuesday evening, and the portal from Ussur opened at West Century and Crenshaw on the dot of seven on Tuesday evening, and Grouw’s sister Yan and the other two duals walked through it like they’d done this a hundred times before - which probably they had. The portal was a fifteen minute drive from the warehouse where they trained, and Yan and Su’son got in the car with Wesley while Tarrag rode in the bed of the truck.</p>
<p>Yan had said she wouldn’t be telling them in advance what type of duals she would be bringing to each session, or even whether they were able to split in this dimension. Eventually (in a month or so) they would get to know all of the duals who had volunteered, but while the duals had the advantage of surprise, they might as well use it to make the training just that bit tougher.</p>
<p>For all three duals, the first priority was Wesley’s injury - as an obvious point of vulnerability, something that they would all target in a fight. Was the injury tender, how hard a blow was required to disable him with pain? Then he must wear padding, either over his clothes or under; over would discourage the attack, while under might allow them to invite the attack and use it to their advantage. How many moves and formations had the two of them developed to minimise the effect of the missing arm against different types of adversaries, in different situations? Yes, the crossbow was excellent, they would build on that and there was little wrong with their individual techniques, but they could get much better value out of those techniques, increase their margins of safety, if they all used these sessions to concentrate on their tactics.</p>
<p>Both duals were able to split - which wasn’t much of a surprise in itself - but Gunn would never had guessed the types of the demons from the combined forms. Su’son split into a bristly warthog thing and a woman who looked almost human apart from the grey skin - until she flexed her long legs and sprang ten feet into the air, straight over their heads. Tarrag split into a chunky blue Hull, like Grouw, and something like a grizzly but with armour plates instead of fur. If the fights had been for real, Wesley and Gunn would have been dead ten times over; if they turned themselves into masters of tactics with the technique to match then they might get that down to three times over, but then nothing in the visions had ever been a fraction as versatile, organised or prepared as the duals.</p>
<p>The session ran over so they didn’t go to the noodle place as planned, just took the duals for a quick drink in a demon bar close to the garage where Grouw worked (Yan’s choice: Gunn had never dared go in there before); and then got the duals back to West Century and Crenshaw with ten minutes to spare before the portal opened at midnight. The duals had mostly talked amongst themselves in the bar, not ignoring Wesley and Gunn, just letting themselves into their usual after-shift habits; Wesley and Gunn had listened, and Yan gave them odd scraps of background, and when they had questions all three duals joined in answering, briefly but willingly.</p>
<p>Back home, the tape had recorded several minutes of Angel calling for Wesley, saying that he wanted to read, and then about half an hour of Angelus enjoying a violent hallucination, which the screen showed as sexual as well as violent. Angel had probably tried to read on his own; Wesley had left the book against the wall, but now it was on the floor halfway to the door, and the tape seemed to show that Angel had called twice, the first time slowly realising that Wesley would not come, that he must be out or asleep, and the second time asking questions about things in the book, saying he wanted to understand. He sounded puzzled and frustrated. When had he taken Wesley’s shirt from the mattress and put it by the wall, where Wesley normally sat? Before he’d called that second time, or after? Did he think it had magical powers to help him remember and understand?</p>
<p>Gunn and Wesley both needed a shower and Gunn suggested they take one together, which they’d never done before. Gunn said it would be quicker, but of course it wasn’t. He kept thinking about Angel, about Angelus with his trousers open, about how soon Wesley would have to use those new Speedos. Probably not a good idea to give Wes any reasons, any memories to make him think about sex when he was in this shower; but there was already enough that was just Wesley and Angel.</p>
<p>Gunn woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of voices: Wesley and Angel and that book, coming from the receiver, which was on the chair by Wesley’s side of the bed, turned on very low. Wesley was reading: a conversation between these L.A. cops, probably, but he was just doing it in his regular Wesley voice. Angel asked questions (“Who said that?”) but also made comments that showed that he was following the story. Gunn turned the receiver off after a few minutes. He could still hear the voices but just as a murmur, less than the noise from traffic. Gunn woke again around dawn to find Wesley back beside him and asleep; the receiver was on again, but was silent.</p>
<p>“He says he wants to get clean, and to have a change of clothes.”</p>
<p>“He said that last night, you mean?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “He asked for a shower last night, but I said we’d have to wait until you were there to stand guard.”</p>
<p>“Better have your Speedos on ready, then, for the next time he wakes up. Not gonna be easy.”</p>
<p>Gunn was right, though he hadn’t gone far in imagining how it would be difficult. Angel woke shortly past ten, in hell. They took him in some blood and a change of clothes, and after he’d drunk, Wesley told him they were going to take him into another room and give him a shower, and asked him to get undressed. Angel backed against the wall and glared at Wesley, muscles working in his jaw.</p>
<p>“Don’t you want to get clean? We’re not going to hurt you. You know you need to get clean. Please, Angel.” Wesley reached out for the top button of Angel’s shirt, and Angel snarled and threw Wesley off, halfway across the room. Gunn had the chain draped over one shoulder and he leapt in, swinging the chain as a weapon, and caught Angel about the head and back.</p>
<p>“Wesley, are you OK? Can you get the holy-water? Help me get out of here.”</p>
<p>“I’m getting it.” Gunn could hear Wesley running for the door. But Angel wasn’t making any attempt to come back at Gunn; instead, he’d retreated along the wall, out of Gunn’s reach. He was still furious, but it was a broken fury; he knew he couldn’t stop them, he knew what they would do to him now he’d tried to fight back.</p>
<p>Gunn said, “Take your clothes off, Angel,” and Angel dropped his head, turned away, and obeyed. Through everything, he kept his head lowered, couldn’t have seen anything of the living-room except the carpet in front of his feet. He closed his eyes when Gunn started chaining him to the faucet, and he didn’t see anything of Wesley at all. They left him kneeling on the mattress with the pile of fresh clothes beside him, and with an order to get dressed.</p>
<p>“That was truly horrible.” They were not looking at the screen, probably wouldn’t look for at least another half hour.</p>
<p>“Yup. How’s that sponge-bath looking now?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head slowly, then sighed. “Better. But we’d still have to make him get undressed. We’ll try this one more time. I suppose we’ll get hardened.”</p>
<p>“Wish he’d warned you last night.”</p>
<p>“So do I. Maybe… Maybe he can’t imagine his other states anymore. He hasn’t asked about them in weeks. We don’t talk about them. Or… not about any state except Angelus.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>On Thursday night, while they were out training between themselves, the tape caught Angel calling for Wesley again, but this time the sounds went on for much longer. The actual calling was mostly in the first minute, getting more and more anxious and then Angel clearly realised that Wesley wasn’t going to come and read with him, and that he would have to read on his own again. This time, however, he went back to the very beginning of the book. He didn’t read out loud, not exactly, but he did talk to himself as he read, explaining who the Bad Czeck was, who Jane Wayne was, that no, he’d never met them, that this wasn’t happening right now, that it wasn’t Mother’s Day, that there was just an ex-cop telling a story to pass the time. He wasn’t quoting Wesley word-for-word, but he wasn’t leaving much out from what Gunn could remember.</p>
<p>He seemed absorbed and content, though his way of enjoying the story must be a million miles from what this Wambaugh guy had intended. After about half an hour he started to lose focus, not explaining any more, but making remarks that probably came at first from something in the book but drifted further and further away, and became slower and quieter until he must have shut down or fallen asleep. He was lying on his side with his back to the wall, the book face-down between his knee and his hand.</p>
<p>Friday was their second session with the duals: two new demon-names they’d have to remember. Gunn made a chart to put on the wall, with pictures copied from Wesley’s books. They’d sorted out the padding for Wesley on the Wednesday so that was now part of their morning routine: Gunn helping Wesley strap the padding on before he got dressed, making him ready for whatever the day might hold in the way of training or vision.</p>
<p>On Friday morning, Gunn had just started adjusting the fit when Wesley said, “I want to come straight home after the training. I don’t want to stay out for the noodles and the beer.”</p>
<p>“You bored with duals already? Hope you got some other idea for payin’ em back.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t -” Wesley sighed. “I should have said, ‘Would you mind going without me? Just for tonight.’ Or until Angel’s settled in properly. Right now… I don’t want to leave him for any longer than I have to.”</p>
<p>Never mind “right now”: wasn’t that the story of Wesley’s life? Main difference with “right now” was that tape-recorder: the sound of Angel all hurt and bewildered when it turned out Wesley had a life of his own. Five to ten days, that email had said from the jewellery site; next week, it had damn well better be next week. “Course I don’t mind. Better sound Yan out first, though. Could look bad, comin’ this soon. Hafta keep ‘em sweet, Wes.”</p>
<p>“I know. I’ll talk to her. Try to present it as… just an idea.”</p>
<p>“Or me. Depends who has the best chance to get her on her own.”</p>
<p>This time all three duals could have fitted in the car, but Yan said she’d ride with Gunn. Turned out Grouw might be joining them after training; they’d need to call him when they knew when and where they’d be going. Perfect opening, seemed to Gunn. “You know Wes’s got this sick friend needs looking after? Guessin’ Grouw told you, ‘cos he’s who we used to train with.”</p>
<p>“A head injury, Grouw said. Makes him violent.”</p>
<p>“Sometimes, yeah. Well, since we moved apartments he’s been gettin’ weird when he’s left on his own too long, and -”</p>
<p>“You need to get back. Sure. Grouw’ll come and pick us up. Say nine, nine-thirty?”</p>
<p>“No, I’m still good, it’s just Wesley. He’s the one Angel gets weird about. You’re all OK if he drops out?”</p>
<p>“No problem. I thought there must be more than Grouw’d said. He made it sound far too easy.”</p>
<p>“Easy enough for me. Different for Wes. Guess you’d know how bad it can get, with violent and weird?”</p>
<p>“Up to a point. Their cells are moved out of our section when they seem to have gone insane.”</p>
<p>Angel hadn’t called for Wesley, not when they were out training or after Wesley had got back. Gunn was woken, though, at three in the morning, by Wesley coming back to bed, turning the receiver back on even before he took his robe off.</p>
<p>During the day on Saturday, Angel was lucid twice, and Wesley wouldn’t let them just pick a time for their training session. Instead, they had to wait for Angel to fall asleep and then wake up again, to try to be sure they wouldn’t miss a lucid period. And, yes, Angel had remained awake and in hell all the time they were gone, so they were obviously gonna do more of that, fitting their lives around the chance that Angel might be lucid. Nah, they’d settle down in a few weeks; Wesley would get hardened, decide that having to re-read a chapter on his own was not the worst thing that could happen to a brain-damaged vampire.</p>
<p>Gunn went out again on Saturday afternoon, spent a couple of hours visiting the sites of some of the visions and some of the Angel Investigations cases, looking for any signs that trouble might be coming back, and also looking for people to talk to, just to see what he could pick up. Another hour or so doing the occult bookstores, listening in, asking what people had been buying, buying a couple of serious books for Wesley, and a book for himself about demon dimensions. The book was by one of their competitors in the L.A. demon market, who claimed that he’d visited at least twenty of the dimensions, had been lucky to escape with his life, but had still left fabulous demon-women pining for him in every one. Gunn had already guessed that the guy had even less of a grip on reality than Angel, but it was worth five bucks to see the full proof. And then Blockbuster for “Hollow Man” and Trader Joe’s for lasagne and key lime pie; they weren’t making it an official “date” this time, just an evening of winding down.</p>
<p>Angel called when Gunn was about to serve out the lasagne (smell of food woke him up, maybe) and he didn’t even bother to call for Wesley by name, just stood there by the wall with the book open, saying, “They’re ready. They want to start now. Villalobos won’t want to wait.” Gunn put the lasagne back to keep warm and used the time to start his own book. They’d probably finish their two books at about the same time, since Gunn couldn’t ignore Angel’s questions and comments any more than Wesley could.</p>
<p>“No. No, it’s not the same person. That was Leery, in the bar. Lester is someone different. This is the first time Villalobos has met him. They just have similar names.”</p>
<p>A pause, in which Angel studied Wesley. “They have names. Do you have a name?”</p>
<p>“Yes. My name is Wesley.”</p>
<p>Slowly: “Wesley.” Then: “Did you have a name in the school? When you were in the library? Or were you someone different then?”</p>
<p>“My name was Wesley then, too. Just the same.”</p>
<p>“And when I was lost? When I couldn’t come near them? Did he know your name? Angelus. Did Darla know it before?”</p>
<p>“I - I don’t understand what you’re asking, Angel. My name is Wesley. You’ve always known me as Wesley.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded several times. “I’ve always known you. As Wesley.”</p>
<p>“That’s right.” A smile of encouragement, then Wesley got them back to the book.</p>
<p>There was no call during the night and Angel was asleep when they woke. They got up quickly, to be ready to go training as soon as they knew they could leave Angel, but Angel woke up lucid (and knowing Wesley’s name), so they didn’t get out until nearly midday.</p>
<p>Angel had a vision while they were gone, and the tape suggested that it had hit during a mercifully brief hallucination about being tortured (probably in hell, possibly involving a pair of demons and being taken to a different room). The tape had caught the words from the reverberation phase very clearly. Angel was still repeating some of the words when they got back from training, and from his mutterings and the drawings they would probably have been able to work out that an Aabaxes had dug its tunnel somewhere on the beach, they would have known to look for the big sandcastle with the turrets and the rows of tiny shells and the arched gateway scooped out so deep you’d almost think the castle was hollow. They would have known the name of the child that was going to vanish into that gateway, but without the tape they wouldn’t have known which beach to go to.</p>
<p>Afterwards they gave themselves a shower and then an hour in bed. They’d been filthy, sand everywhere, just stripped themselves in record time, then helped get each other clean. There were marks on Wesley’s skin from the padding and the straps, very slight, where it had rubbed or pressed in. Gunn traced the marks, almost absent-mindedly, as they lay, quietly, during the middle of their hour in bed. Would Wesley get calluses there, to match those on his hand? And what did it say about Gunn that the idea turned him on? That he already enjoyed undoing the straps, the same way he enjoyed undoing the buttons on Wesley’s shirt? Nothing, Angelus. It said nothing. Except that he was in love with Wesley, he was in love with Wesley’s body. So it was natural, it was totally natural, that he was in love with everything that was different and personal and private about Wesley’s body.</p>
<p>Gunn read some more of the demon-dimension book during the evening and then found himself lying awake after Wesley had gone to sleep, thinking too many messy thoughts about crazy people.</p>
<p>Angel was slowly waking up. Gunn heard him sighing and shifting, then getting to his feet, moving around. Gunn was waiting for the sound of pages being turned, and there it was, and then seconds later: “We need to read. We have to read.” Angel’s voice was quiet; he seemed to be talking to himself, not calling for Wesley. But that wouldn’t last.</p>
<p>Gunn gave a deep sigh, hauled himself up on his elbow, and shook Wesley gently by the shoulder. “Wes? Wes, you should wake up. He wants to read.”</p>
<p>Wesley had turned the receiver off before he got out of bed, but Gunn turned it back on after Wesley had been gone for about a minute; he wasn’t going to sleep, so he might as well know.</p>
<p>Angel had forgotten almost everything about the story. Wesley started like he usually did, by giving a quick reminder of where they’d got to last time and Angel must just have stared at Wesley, maybe shaken his head, too lost even to ask questions.</p>
<p>“No? Well, maybe it’s been too long since we read all that. And maybe it wasn’t interesting enough for you, anyway. We could look for something better.”</p>
<p>“No.” Definite. “This is the book.”</p>
<p>“OK. That’s good. I like this book. It’s a good book, right from the start.” Gunn heard the sound of Wesley finding his place in the book with one hand, and then they were back in the bar on Mother’s Day, with everyone looking at the Bad Czech, waiting for him to lose his temper over what he was reading in the newspaper. Angel clearly thought he was hearing the story for the first time, but he only asked a fraction of his usual questions, and he guessed that the ferocious cop Ludwig was in fact a dog, well ahead of the punch-line.</p>
<p>Wesley was leaving some stuff out, like he always did; he’d told Gunn that he was simply too embarrassed to read out the description of the drunk dog having a wet dream on the pool table, so he skipped several lines and said that it drooled instead. And, being Wesley, he announced each change clearly in the tone of his voice, including some changes that he had not discussed with Gunn: no way that red-haired cop had said that his wife was fucking a “black man”.</p>
<p>Angel seemed to start drifting off shortly after the detective Villalobos arrived at the bar. His comments became fewer and stranger and then stopped. Wesley carried on reading, but getting slower and quieter, until he stopped too; and then after about ten or twenty seconds of silence, Gunn heard Wesley put the book down on the floor and get to his feet.</p>
<p>“The book!”</p>
<p>“It’s right there, Angel. You can read it whenever you want.”</p>
<p>“You read it. You…” The sound of Wesley sitting down heavily, like he’d been pulled back. “Read it.”</p>
<p>“Of course I’ll read it. Let me know if you feel you’ve heard enough.”</p>
<p>Angel wasn’t hearing a word about Villalobos drinking his vodka and getting the worst feeling about the gooned-out vice cop with the eyes like bullet-holes, and Wesley’s voice was quite different now he was reading to himself, quicker and much flatter, and he was getting bored and tired. Eventually he must have seen some new change in Angel, and he slowed and stopped again, and put the book down again, and this time was able to leave.</p>
<p>“Oh, God, we kept you up. I’m sorry.” Wesley looked nearly as exhausted as he’d been when Gunn had first met him, when he’d been coping with Angel on his own.</p>
<p>“Couldn’t sleep, anyway. Y’must know that scene in the bar off by heart.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded his head, then shook it over and over. “Why didn’t I get a simple book? ‘Look, this is the hero. He looks like this, and he sees this, and he does that.’ No jokes. No tricks. And absolutely no Rottweilers on pool tables.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed and pulled Wesley into his arms. “Yeah, but you’d be bored readin’ that even once. How much you think he’ll remember tomorrow?”</p>
<p>Thoughtful: “I don’t know. I think it was the vision that wiped it out. We’ll see if it… just erased a few lines on the page. Or ripped out half the sheet.”</p>
<p>“Not like there’s a whole lotta sheets left.”</p>
<p>“No. Not many.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>The ring arrived on Monday morning. Gunn pushed it slowly and carefully onto Wesley’s finger, then held Wesley’s hand hard, closing his eyes as he felt the band of metal still cold against the warmth of Wesley’s skin.</p>
<p>“So this is what it’s like to have a possessive boyfriend.” Wesley was smiling, a half-smile, with a raised eyebrow.</p>
<p>“What is it like?” Gunn was still very serious. He knew he was being too intense. Was he possessive? Did that say it, what he’d been feeling about Wesley with Angel? If you could even feel possessive when you hadn’t had a moment of feeling jealous.</p>
<p>No, not feeling jealous, but… Angel acted now like he didn’t know Wesley had a lover. Or like it didn’t matter, like Wesley might just as well have been alone. Nothing in Wesley’s life except to be there when Angel called for him. Yeah, weeks of that now, and maybe the main thing Gunn was feeling was that he’d been blanked out – and by the person they lived with, who’d even once seen them in bed together. So here he was wanting to set some real, hard sign that he did have a claim on Wesley, that he was right there in Wesley’s life. And of course he knew Angel was crazy, it didn’t mean anything that Angel was forgetting how Wesley had Gunn – but that didn’t change the feeling, of needing to do something to put himself back in the picture.</p>
<p>Wesley had stopped smiling, had turned nearly as serious as Gunn. “It’s… exciting. And calming at the same time.”</p>
<p>“Yes.” On a breath, and Gunn moved in to touch his lips to Wesley’s. They stood very still, just barely opened to one another, then Gunn stepped back and released Wesley’s hand, and they returned to work.</p>
<p>Angel did recognise the scene in the bar, but as something he’d read (or witnessed?) many years ago. He needed Wesley to read it all again, and this time he didn’t interrupt with questions, but with opinions based on his memories, and most of his memories were badly messed up. For the first couple of opinions, Wesley tried to set Angel straight, but Angel was too definite so Wesley just agreed and carried on reading. Angel stayed with the story nearly until the end of the scene, long enough to get concerned about the gooned-out vice cop, who he didn’t remember (“Is he going to hurt someone? Was he talking about hurting someone? - “Just himself, Angel. There’s always a suicidal cop in a Wambaugh novel.”); and Wesley went about ten minutes into the next scene before he saw whatever it was that told him Angel wouldn’t notice him leave.</p>
<p>By Tuesday evening, when they were about to set off to meet two more duals, Wesley said he felt as if his head would explode or his brains would leak out of his ears if he had to read that chapter one more time. Angel’s memories of the story never got any clearer, and they were never the same twice; kinda interesting, for about a day, and then you worked hard on not listening to him. The next time, Wesley was going to pick up where they’d left off before the vision, act as if he expected Angel to be able to follow, as if this was actually the start of the story, and let Angel’s memories take their chances.</p>
<p>“Wha’d’you think he’d do now, if you weren’t there? D’you think he’d read on his own?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. I’m almost tempted to put it to the test. I’ll stay for the meal tonight, at least. I need a break.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, y’do.”</p>
<p>Wesley came to the bar as well, which surprised Gunn. The effect of the ring, maybe, making him give more weight to the parts of his life that weren’t Angel. Or helping him get some distance from Angel. Angelus was there when they got home and the tape showed that Wesley had chosen a good night to take a break. Wesley even left the receiver off when they went to bed.</p>
<p>When Angel’s shouting woke them at about four in the morning, they thought at first he was having a vision. But no, it wasn’t a vision, or even a hallucination - he was definitely seeing what was in front of him, and for some reason he was outraged and disgusted by the cop novel, and he was tearing it to pieces. They watched him tear up all four books and the magazine, and then he picked up Wesley’s shirt and took a grip to rip it up the back. Wesley looked away then, but Gunn saw Angel shake his head, looking pained, bend to clear a space on the littered floor, and place the shirt carefully in the space.</p>
<p>The outrage was over. Angel stood for a long time with his head lowered and turned to the side, then knelt and slowly started pushing the scraps of paper across the carpet, to hide them under the mattress. The shirt went too, and when all of the evidence of Wesley was out of sight, Angel staggered towards the corner furthest from the mattress, off the screen.</p>
<p>Wesley turned the receiver on, put the volume up high, but Angel was silent.</p>
<p>“I should never have turned it off. Or - I should have stayed up until Angelus went to sleep. How long must he have been calling?”</p>
<p>“Well, he’s fucking spoiled. If he hadn’t snapped out of it with the shirt, I’d’ve - I dunno, he’s already been sent to his room. I’d’ve made him drink his blood cold for the rest of the month.”</p>
<p>“I suppose he had his reasons. I wonder how long he’ll stay angry with me.”</p>
<p>Angel was back in his usual corner and in hell when they got up. Wesley was still upset - very low, and talking like he was dreading the next time Angel would be lucid. Gunn kept wanting to try to joke Wesley out of it, but what if Angel was just as bad the next time? Better not to act like it’d be fine, but watch instead, and work out how to help Wes once they saw what they were up against.</p>
<p>Early in the afternoon, they heard waking-up sounds, and when they looked at the screen they saw Angel sitting up. He was looking confused and alarmed, and then he was acting like he’d lost something really important, searching urgently on the floor around the sides of the mattress. They saw him giving up, and then he turned his attention towards the door, and he stepped forward like he was about to call out. Wesley stepped forward too, taking a deep breath like he was bracing himself, but Angel suddenly stopped, looking stricken. He closed his mouth, and then he started looking from side to side around the room in a vague, jerky manner.</p>
<p>Wesley waited and watched for about half a minute, then took another deep breath and went to knock on the door. “Angel, are you alright? Do you want me to come in?”</p>
<p>Relief, but then that stricken look again, and slowly: “I don’t know you.”</p>
<p>“My name’s Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. I’ve been -”</p>
<p>“Wesley! Wesley. It’s Wesley.”</p>
<p>Wesley opened the door. “You recognise my name?”</p>
<p>Angel looked at Wesley and nodded over and over. “Wesley.” A deep sigh. “I couldn’t - I thought everything had been taken away. I thought…” He turned and looked towards the mattress.</p>
<p>“Are you looking for your books?”</p>
<p>“Yes. There should be books, shouldn’t there? Books and… you. But there was nothing.”</p>
<p>Wesley moved further into the room to kneel down by the nearest corner of the mattress and lift it up by about a foot. “That’s because you did this last night. I think I must have done something to make you very angry with me.” He set the mattress back down.</p>
<p>Angel was shaking his head. “Why? Why would I do that? The books help me - They help me hold on.”</p>
<p>“I thought that you must have woken up when I was asleep, and I didn’t hear you asking me to come and read with you. So you got angry with me. About the books. You do get angry, sometimes.”</p>
<p>“Yes, I…” Angel frowned, lifted his hand to his head, then leaned down and hauled the mattress out of the way, which revealed about half of the area underneath, including the shirt amongst all the paper. “Your shirt. It was your shirt.” He reached in to take the shirt, now deeply creased, raised it to his face for a few seconds, then let it drop onto the mattress. “But why would I hide what I’d done? Wouldn’t I want you to see? Are you sure it was me?”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “You seemed to… regret what you’d done at the end. You couldn’t bring yourself to tear the shirt up. It looked like you. It certainly wasn’t Angelus.”</p>
<p>“I can’t imagine being angry with you like that. I think I’d be disappointed. Lost. But I know you have to sleep. I know you have to go out sometimes. How could I get that angry?”</p>
<p>“You weren’t just angry, you were… disgusted. Maybe you thought I was… I don’t know.”</p>
<p>“Disgusted?” Angel looked thoughtful, then said slowly, “Was there any sign that I thought I was back in hell? Was there anything about the room to suggest that Angelus had been there recently?”</p>
<p>“Well… Angelus had been there immediately before. I don’t know what sign he would have left except of sex. I wouldn’t have said you were in hell, though you do… protest sometimes. Yes, actually, that is when I’ve seen you angriest.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded. “I thought I was in hell, and that the books and the shirt were trophies from someone Angelus had killed. I don’t know how they did it, but I often felt as if they’d let him out. As if we were separate for some of the time. They told me he’d been free. They told me what he’d done. And there seemed to be evidence, I seemed to remember… I don’t know if it was real or another torture, but either way it… disgusted me. I wouldn’t have been able to stand… looking at his trophies.”</p>
<p>“Oh. So you weren’t angry with me.”</p>
<p>“I’m sure I wasn’t.”</p>
<p>A slight smile in Wesley’s voice: “I’ll get a trashbag. We’ll clear this away.”</p>
<p>After Wesley had fetched the trashbag, he went to the bedroom and changed his shirt, and he took the shirt that he’d been wearing in to give to Angel. When they’d cleared up and Wesley had set the bag and the crumpled shirt outside the door, and Angel had pushed the mattress back into place, Wesley said, “Do you want to read something now? I’ll get another copy of ‘The Delta Star’ when we’re out training this evening, but we could read something short right now.”</p>
<p>“That was the brown book?”</p>
<p>“That’s right. That’s the book we’ve been reading for the last week and a half. You’ve been quite insistent sometimes about reading ‘The Delta Star’. And not any other book.”</p>
<p>“A week and a half. Have we nearly finished it?”</p>
<p>“Um… We got about a quarter of the way through. And then you had a vision and afterwards you couldn’t remember what we’d read. And since then we’ve been re-reading the first chapter. You enjoy it, but you never remember enough of it to get any further.”</p>
<p>Angel stared at Wesley, looking bleak, then nodded his head, a small nod. “I think I knew. Not that, but… how little I have left. It’s slipping away. I can feel it slipping away. You -” Gunn saw Angel swallow. “I won’t know you for much longer. What will I be when I don’t know you?”</p>
<p>Wesley put his hand on Angel’s arm. “I’ll always be here, Angel. Even if you don’t know me.”</p>
<p>A grunt, could have meant anything, then Angel said, “You said you’d find something short. If we’re going to read.”</p>
<p>“I’ve got some volumes of short stories.” Wesley came out and seemed to just take the first book he found. “These are set in New York a hundred years ago. Is that alright?”</p>
<p>“Was I there?”</p>
<p>“I think you were in Europe. I could check the dates.” Angel shook his head, and they sat down against the wall.</p>
<p>“Don’t leave the book in here.” Said abruptly, while Wesley was still getting ready.</p>
<p>“Oh? You don’t want to be able to read on your own?”</p>
<p>“If I thought I was in hell again, I might tear it up. I don’t want to - I don’t want to do that.”</p>
<p>“OK. I’ll keep it in the living-room.”</p>
<p>The new book was much more Wesley’s type of book than the cop novel, very Masterpiece Theatre, nothing in it that Wesley was embarrassed to read out loud - but then Wesley liked the cop novel (except for the first chapter), Wesley liked “Dumb and Dumber”, so it was more that the new book was closer to the ideas of Wesley that Gunn had lived with for longest. Angel found the book easier to follow and he stayed with it for nearly twenty minutes. When Wesley finished, he left the book on the floor at first, and then he remembered what Angel had said and he went back to get it.</p>
<p>Gunn had just got to sleep that night when he was brought wide-awake by Angel shouting Wesley’s name, sounding desperate. Gunn helped Wesley into his robe, then dragged some clothes on and followed a few seconds later; though he knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything except watch and wait.</p>
<p>“Apartment 206. Thinks he’s hunting it. Wesley! No idea. Apartment 206. Thinks he can - In pieces. Not like that!”</p>
<p>A vision. Angel was scrabbling for his pad now, starting to draw. Wesley turned away from the screen, face deathly pale, and went straight back to the bedroom. He let the robe drop on the floor beside the bed but Gunn picked it up, then turned the receiver off.</p>
<p>“Wes? I’m going to get you a glass of your wine. ‘less it’d be wrong for now, make you feel sick?”</p>
<p>“I - Yes, I need something.”</p>
<p>Gunn poured a small glass, but brought the bottle in. Most of Angel’s words were quite clear, even through the two doors. Those neighbours had better be stone deaf. They sat up against the pillows, with Gunn’s arm tight around Wesley’s waist.</p>
<p>“OK. Not a message. We know he’d been thinking about you. About… losing sight of you. So he’s sleeping and dreaming about it, and, yeah, this happens.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “I can’t look at the drawings.”</p>
<p>“Christ! Me neither. I’ll throw the pad away, get him a new one.” After a pause, much quieter: “I think it’ll be easier, Wes, when he’s forgotten. Should stop him doin’ this. You won’t have to worry about making him angry. Having him disappointed ‘cos you’re not there.”</p>
<p>Wesley took a long drink. “I don’t want to be looking forward to that. He’s dying. In a way, he’s dying. I can’t… I can’t want him gone.”</p>
<p>“No.” So Gunn would try not to wish Angel gone, for Wesley’s sake.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley had about twelve books of short stories, and he looked them out and put them in a stack by the door, and took a different book in each time. Angel was lucid about once a day. He never called for Wesley by name, acted sometimes like he thought the mixture of scents on the shirt was Wesley’s name. He didn’t even talk about reading, or about books, probably because the books weren’t there in his room any more. When he called, it was for Wesley to “tell him”, to “show him”. He did recognise Wesley and he accepted Wesley’s presence completely, and he became absorbed in the stories, but in a way that seemed to make him less lucid the more he concentrated. By the time he was two pages in, he thought the story was real, happening now, he thought the people in the story knew about him and Wesley reading the story, and he thought that he and Wesley were somewhere in the book.</p>
<p>“What does it say first? Does it say why the library made you different? Why you were kneeling? The bed still smells of pain.”</p>
<p>“No, that isn’t in here.”</p>
<p>“Why not? They know.” Stabbing at the page. “I want to see it. Properly. Like this.”</p>
<p>“Well. Maybe they’ll tell you. But not until you know some more of their story.”</p>
<p>Angel had a vision on Saturday evening, while Wesley was in the middle of cooking a curry. The vision brought out Angelus - the first time with a vision in the new apartment - and they chained and gagged him. The restraints probably weren’t necessary here, and God knows they were coping well enough with Angelus loose; but they knew the restraints worked so they might as well keep on using them.</p>
<p>Gunn looked up at the screen as soon as he same out of the bedroom on Sunday morning, but he didn’t see what he was expecting. “He’s loose! You let him out! When did you let him out?”</p>
<p>“At about five. I heard him wake up. I thought he might be lucid. But he was deep in hell.”</p>
<p>“And you still let him out? On your own. You know how he gets! He could have torn you up and shoved you under the mattress.”</p>
<p>“I could see he wasn’t like that. I took the gag off first. He was just frightened. He seemed more frightened because I was on my own. He kept looking for you.”</p>
<p>“You know you should have woken me up. Did you feed him?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “I know it doesn’t make any difference. But I have to give him something.”</p>
<p>“You gotta wake me up, Wes. Don’t do that again.”</p>
<p>A long shrug, conceding but not repentant. “I thought he might be lucid.”</p>
<p>Angel wasn’t lucid at any point that Sunday, and by the time they left for training on Monday evening, Gunn was starting to wonder if that Saturday’s vision had been the end, and then to wonder if he should tell Wesley what he was thinking, or wait for Wesley to bring the subject up.</p>
<p>Back home, Gunn played at the computer while Wesley read the newspaper and then that first book of short stories that he’d read with Angel. After about an hour Gunn paused the game to go and get a soda, turned to ask Wesley if he wanted anything from the kitchen, and saw Wesley getting to his feet, looking alert and relieved. Gunn looked up at the screen, and yes, Angel was awake, standing with Wesley’s shirt in his hands, and handling it with the care he only showed when he was lucid. Wesley started to cross the room, but then Angel let the shirt drop to the mattress, and there was something very wrong with the gesture, with the way Angel then turned his back. Dismissal. A chilling indifference. Nothing like the way Angel behaved when he was about to call for Wesley. Gunn and Wesley looked at one another, concerned and puzzled, then Gunn went to wait for Wesley, to work out what was happening with Angel.</p>
<p>Angel was in a low place, slumped, looking almost hollowed out. He turned to look at the door, moving very slowly, like he was pushing all the time against some great weight. His expression was empty, stayed empty as he looked up at the ceiling, then out of the window, and then as he backed up against the wall. A long pause after he’d reached the wall, then he very slowly folded in upon himself. Was he lucid? Or could he be in hell, maybe… showing another type of reaction to the trophies he thought Angelus had left?</p>
<p>He was speaking now. They could hear the murmur from the receiver a few feet behind them on the coffee table, though on the screen they couldn’t see his face or any sign of movement. Again they looked at one another, then over at the receiver, and then they left the screen and went to turn the volume up.</p>
<p>“They should’ve… They should’ve… They should’ve told me. I knew it was time but… they should have told me. I would have… They didn’t want him. They didn’t want him any more. He wasn’t - So they got rid of him. Like… Like…They sent him away. They must have said… it was like firing him. He’s been - That’s what - What did they tell him? Did he - He wasn’t what they wanted. They must have… They should have told me. But they just took him. He wasn’t… They took him.”</p>
<p>That seemed to be all. And now that Angel was silent, he seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into that slump.</p>
<p>“Who the hell’s ‘they’? Is it the guards? You think they… let him have a friend there? But he acts like he almost expects them to play fair. Where is he?”</p>
<p>“I’m - I’m not sure. He might… He might be talking about the Powers. Their plans for him. He might… He might be talking about what happened to Doyle. He doesn’t have a normal sense of time any more. Anything can seem like yesterday to him if he still has strong feelings about it. He might have…” A shrug. “…been looking for Doyle on my shirt. I don’t know.”</p>
<p>“We leave him like that?”</p>
<p>A very difficult question for Wesley. “I don’t know what I could say to help if it is Doyle. And my shirt was - Maybe he doesn’t know me now. But then we could be as wrong as we were about why he tore up the books. I think I have to find out. Assuming he is lucid.” They went over to the bedroom door. Wesley knocked, but Angel showed no reaction at all. “Angel? Can I come in? Is there anything I can do?” A sharp movement of the head. Not a “no”, more like he’d turned watchful. Suspicious.</p>
<p>Almost in a whisper, Gunn said, “Looks to me like he’s thinking you’re not real. Like you’re a hallucination again. Y’know, he could’ve been talking about you with all of that. Just as much as Doyle.”</p>
<p>Wesley paused with his hand raised to knock again, frowned deeply, looking very uncomfortable. Eventually: “Maybe. But he still… Maybe.” He glanced up at the screen then turned the key in the lock. “Angel, I’m going to come in.” He opened the door, bent to take the next book off the stack, and then stepped in to the bedroom. “Angel, do you know who I am? Do you know where you are?”</p>
<p>Very slowly, Angel raised his head, looked at Wesley, eyes cold, then brought himself to sitting upright. “You think they’ve changed. That they’ll let you back if you…” Shaking his head. “You don’t have a place here now. Watcher! They’ve taken it. Can’t you feel that?” Impatient, like Wesley was being deliberately stupid. “This is just… This is just because I said… They want me to…” Shaking his head again. “But I know what they’ve decided. I know what they’ve done with you.”</p>
<p>Wesley moved closer, hand held out slightly. “I don’t quite understand what you’re saying, Angel. But no one’s done anything with me. Did you think… I’d left?”</p>
<p>With no warning, quicker than Gunn could follow, Angel was on his feet, right in front of Wesley. Wesley flinched and dropped the book. “Don’t do this, we all know you shouldn’t be here. It’s already… Go and tell them what -” An abrupt shake of the head, and then he turned away. “Tell them I don’t want you either. I never wanted you.”</p>
<p>Gunn was in the room; to do what, he didn’t know, but he couldn’t just stand and watch.</p>
<p>“No. I know.” So quiet. Wesley just accepting. “I’ll go. I won’t - I’ll leave you alone. When you get hungry… If you ever want a different book… Charles will bring you anything you need. Goodbye, Angel.” Really goodbye, like this was the end. He’d never even try to speak to Angel again.</p>
<p>Gunn was waiting to put his arm around Wesley, but Wesley pushed past him, shaking his head and not meeting Gunn’s eye. By the time Gunn had closed and locked the door and slid the bolts, Wesley had already shut himself in their bedroom. Or pushed the door hard closed, at any rate; if he’d turned the lock or slid the bolts on the inside, he’d done that much more quietly.</p>
<p>Gunn tried the handle and the door opened. He stepped in quickly, then closed the door. “Wes?” The room was in darkness. Gunn couldn’t see Wesley, but he could hear the small, choked sounds coming from the far side of the bed. Wesley was crouched down, face buried in the crook of his elbow, which was propped on the hard seat of his bedside chair. Gunn knelt beside him and held him by his shoulder and his waist and said nothing, not even his name.</p>
<p>What could he say? It wasn’t alright. It never could be. He wished… He wished… That Angel could be sane again, for however long it would take for him to understand what he’d done, and then to make it right. To do whatever Wesley needed. But now Angel could never make it right, even if, when he was sane, he would have wanted to. And Gunn didn’t know Angel, he didn’t know what Angel wanted or what Angel felt, he just knew what Wesley deserved.</p>
<p>Gunn hated Angel now. Wanting to kick Angelus bloody: that was nothing. He didn’t even know yet, what would be enough punishment. Make him take a wound right through, in a way that wouldn’t heal.</p>
<p>After a few minutes Wesley raised his head, not recovered exactly, but controlled. He put his hand on Gunn’s thigh, leaned against him, and Gunn kept the same hold, but tightened. “I’m sorry. I - I’m sorry.” Wesley’s breathing was still very unsteady.</p>
<p>“You - He didn’t know what he was saying, Wes.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Charles.” As quiet and sad as his last words to Angel. “He knew exactly what he was saying. He knows me as… He knows me. He’s remembered everything important.”</p>
<p>“Don’t say that. Don’t. Look, I’ll - I’ll run you a bath. Then we’ll share a beer and talk about stupid movies or something while you’re in the bath. Forget about him. I’ll turn the screen off. I’ll turn the receiver off. We’ll forget about him.”</p>
<p>A deep breath, with only a slight shake, then, slowly: “That sounds good. I do need to get warm.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. I’ll start now?”</p>
<p>Gunn felt Wesley nod, then draw away. “I’ll change into my robe.”</p>
<p>When he moved back to Wesley after topping up the hot water for the second time, Gunn said, “How long’s it been since you took a bath without bringin’ a book in with you?”</p>
<p>Wesley laughed. “Longer than I can remember. I even started looking for one just now. Out of habit.”</p>
<p>“Guessed you did. Know that sound a mile off. You lookin’ for a book.”</p>
<p>“It seems strange to…” Wesley swallowed. “I’ll never read with him again. It’s over now. I can put all of those books back.”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head. “He’ll change his mind. First look at me, he’ll be sorry.”</p>
<p>A small smile. “I wonder what he’ll make of you.”</p>
<p>Gunn got a wicked idea. “Think I’ll mess with him. Tell him I’ve had him for twenty years. Denzel’s president. On his second term ‘n’ all.”</p>
<p>“Who’s Vice-President?”</p>
<p>“Uh. Y’right. Hard work. I’ll put Alka-Seltzer in his blood then. Somethin’ like that.”</p>
<p>Quietly: “You don’t have to be angry with him.”</p>
<p>“I do, Wes. Being crazy… ‘s a piss-poor excuse. Anyone else hurt you like that, I’d -”</p>
<p>“No. It’s a reasonable excuse. Going crazy, especially. Knowing it. So he’s… past the point now where I can help him. It had to happen.”</p>
<p>Wesley’s patience was unbearable. Fiercely: “He was lying. You know he knew he was lucky.”</p>
<p>A shrug. “I’m not what he would have asked for. That’s not… I don’t care what he wants. What he doesn’t want. Not that much. It was –” Wesley swallowed. “It was saying that he didn’t want me either. The ‘either’. Because I have so many things I’m ashamed of. And he knows about all of them.”</p>
<p>“No.” A pause. “Like what?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “Not now. They’d seem… You wouldn’t… It doesn’t matter.”</p>
<p>Like hell it didn’t matter. And Gunn knew he would understand, whatever Wesley thought. He wanted to prove that, but not now, not by trying to force Wesley to talk. He laid his hand over Wesley’s wrist, drew it down to Wesley’s fingertips. “You can tell me, y’know. When you’re ready.” And Wesley nodded.</p>
<p>Angel probably wouldn’t be lucid again for at least a couple of days, but Gunn slept with the receiver next to him on the nightstand. Angel wouldn’t know his name. How would he call? Would he still want to do the reading thing?</p>
<p>“It’s empty. The room’s empty. Where is he?” The time was 3:18. A hallucination. Probably. Gunn got out of bed without waking Wesley, and took the receiver with him.</p>
<p>Not a hallucination, but a dream. Angel was lying on the mattress, moving restlessly. “No, that’s wrong. Get a doctor here. You knew I’d be coming today. He should be here ready. Wyndham-Pryce. Room 129. You know this is his room. Why would you move him?” The voice had been impatient, now it became angry. “Taken away? No, he hasn’t. He’s in this hospital. Look again. Type it in again. He should be here ready. Find him.” A pause. “You’re lying. He’s here. I’ll find him. He’s in one of these rooms. Wesley? Are you ready to leave? Where are you? I’ve got everything ready. Your books. And your clothes. You’ll have the bed. I’ve found a good sword. Come on.” Becoming anxious. “Where are you?”</p>
<p>How many rooms had Angel searched in dream-time? Five? A hundred? It didn’t matter. Not in this type of dream. You never found what you were looking for.</p>
<p>Now protesting: “He should be here. He’s supposed to be here. It’s wrong. Taken away. When was he taken away? When did you… see him? A long pause, then very subdued: “That was yesterday. I should have been here yesterday. I would have… It’s too late. But his books. I have his books. We’re supposed to… What happens? If he’s been taken away, what happens?”</p>
<p>Looked like no one knew. Angel became even more restless, but he was done with speaking - just grunts and sighs now. Gunn went back to bed and lay awake for a while trying to figure out how to describe the dream to Wesley. (“He wanted you to be there, Wes. He did.”) But maybe Wesley really didn’t need to hear that. Or maybe it would bring up all that other stuff, make it worse. Gunn hadn’t decided by the time he fell asleep, and in the morning he said nothing to Wesley about the dream.</p>
<p>Angel wasn’t lucid on Tuesday or Wednesday, but halfway through breakfast on Thursday morning he was there with the book in his hands, and he was calling for Wesley. “You are there. Aren’t you? I can hear you.” He sounded hopeful. Relieved.</p>
<p>“Yes, I’m here, Angel. Is there anything I can do for you?” Wesley was wary. “Are you hungry?”</p>
<p>“Not really. Are you going to come and read?”</p>
<p>“If you want.” Wesley unlocked the door and went in.</p>
<p>They sat down and Wesley opened the book, but Angel interrupted him after just a few sentences. “I thought you were gone. Not that I really thought it but as something hanging over me. It seemed true. I felt it.”</p>
<p>“Where did you think I’d gone? Back to England?”</p>
<p>“No, you weren’t anywhere. It was as if you’d been lifted out. Someone had… cancelled your right to exist. There was just the space where you used to be.”</p>
<p>“It sounds like a hallucination. Though you don’t usually remember them.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded. “I knew it didn’t make sense. But I was - I couldn’t quite believe it when I heard your voice.”</p>
<p>Wesley was smiling. “I’m glad you didn’t believe it. I’m not ready to be cancelled.” And they turned back to the book.</p>
<p>Wesley’s coffee was going cold, and Gunn poured it away and made a fresh pot. Angel was in a good mood, very talkative, by his standards. He interrupted the story several more times, didn’t seem to be making much effort to follow it. He was talking about the future, and not on his usual “What will I be?” track, but talking like he wouldn’t always be locked in the room, like he and Wesley had received some guarantee that he’d get better. Wesley didn’t question him, just went along with wherever this new assumption led, which wasn’t very far: driving to Torrance to buy weapons, keeping up a contact in the Police Department (long gone, as far as Wyndham Gunn was concerned).</p>
<p>Wesley was out again after less than half an hour, bringing the book with him. Angel had drifted off very quickly at the end, just short of shutting down.</p>
<p>“Sounds like it was a new type of hallucination on Monday.” Gunn held out the fresh mug of coffee to Wesley. “Should’ve realised. He’ll say anything.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded, also in a good mood, though a quieter one than Angel’s. “Maybe he is getting better. If he can remember his hallucinations and realise that they couldn’t be real. I wonder how quickly we’ll recognise the next one.”</p>
<p>For the rest of the morning Gunn kept on looking up at the screen, not to check what Angel was doing (very little), but to stare at him and try to decide how much he still hated him. The same amount, probably, but with a different type of hate. No satisfaction, now, in imagining the punishment he might inflict; the Angel who’d hurt Wesley just didn’t exist any more, he’d been a jagged fragment thrown out by the madness, fallen to dust some time that same night.</p>
<p>But that fragment had come from somewhere, from somewhere deep inside Angel, and it had known Wesley, and it had known exactly what it was saying. The Angel that was still with them, that was so glad to see Wesley again… Well, that Angel had to have his roots in the same deep place, and that place was full, wasn’t it?, with the cruellest thoughts about Wesley. Should their Angel escape completely, be forgiven, completely, just because he’d been lucky enough not to be tempted to let those thoughts out?</p>
<p>Yes, because that was the easiest answer to live with. Because Wesley was happy to forgive. Because it made Wesley happy, to forgive.</p>
<p>Angel had a vision that night while Gunn was at Caritas. The mission was relatively easy since they got to the house in Montebello before the raising ceremony for the Havelte had even begun. The three roommates had been after an exotic pet, company for the girl’s monitor lizard, and they’d got (or been given) quite the wrong idea about the size, temperament and intelligence of an adult Havelte. They didn’t put up a fight, seemed to think that Wesley and Gunn and the weapons and the whole idea of the mission was cool beyond words, way better than having a demon for a pet. They insisted on helping to carry the books and equipment out to the truck, were all wide-eyed and nodding when Wesley gave his speech about keeping track of them through all the magic stores in L.A.; but Gunn wouldn’t be surprised if they tried it again and soon, not to get the demon, but to be part of another mission. Gunn didn’t have a speech ready to deal with that danger, so he gave each of them an Angel Investigations card. Better to give them an easy way of getting disillusioned with the demon-hunters, even if it meant ten or twenty stupid calls or emails. Gunn went back to Caritas afterwards, and finished his beer and heard the boys’ third song.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>The vision of raising the Havelte destroyed the last of Angel’s lucidity, although Wesley kept watching and waking for all of the next two weeks. Angel might go back to thinking that Wesley had gone, and if he didn’t hear Wesley’s voice, then he might not call. So Wesley tried to be there every time Angel woke, to talk to him as proof or reminder. The only direct response he got was from Angelus, who invited him in but who was clearly working from his own ideas about who this Wesley was. Otherwise Angel ignored him, or showed wordless fear or hostility or mistrust. Wesley would persist for minutes when ignored, just in case Angel was hearing him after all.</p>
<p>Gunn guessed that Wesley was waking at least four or five times a night. If he woke when Wesley was going to check on Angel, or woke to find the bed empty, then he’d get up as well. One night towards the end of the first week, Gunn discovered that the bed was empty because Wesley was asleep on the couch, lying full-length under a blanket, and with the receiver next to him on the coffee table, volume turned up very high; Gunn carried Wesley back to bed, and then won the argument about where Wesley would be sleeping in future, no matter how guilty he felt about waking Gunn.</p>
<p>In the second week, Wesley stopped shaving and started falling asleep at his desk. He also lost all interest in sex; he liked holding and he liked kissing, but nothing raised his pulse, and Gunn decided it was better not to try, than to try and fail. Gunn wouldn’t have believed that he could have the all-day sight of Wesley with stubble and manage to think of anything but sex but they were both too exhausted. Gunn looked at Wesley and had the same fierce, tender feelings, but they stayed in his head and his heart, and what reached his cock seemed only an echo.</p>
<p>On the Wednesday and the Thursday, Gunn rented movies and got the food, but Wesley barely ate, not even the curry on the Thursday, and he saw less than half of the movies, partly because of Angel, mostly from falling asleep. Wesley woke of his own accord for the last few minutes of “Meet the Parents” on Thursday, looked curious about what was happening, but at the end asked only if Angel had shown any change while he’d been asleep.</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head, turned the TV off, and said, “Wes. Gotta be a way we can accept it’s over. With Angel. Been two weeks now.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded, kept on nodding, frowning like he was in pain. “I know. I know. But I don’t know how to stop. To stop imagining if there was one last time. And I wasn’t there.”</p>
<p>“He wouldn’t know it was the last time. Any more than you would. He’d probably think it was just hours since you were in there reading with him. He’d know you wouldn’t be gone long. You’d be there the next time.”</p>
<p>A long, shaking sigh. “I know. But it’s not like when you made us give up on Hollywood-and-Wilcox. You can’t just pull the truck out and take us home. We’re already home. You could take the receiver away from me but we need the screen for our own safety. And I don’t know how to make myself stop watching.”</p>
<p>Gunn frowned, thinking, then said, “What if I made you go away for a few days? Not tomorrow ‘cos we got training, but from Saturday. Stay away till the next training on Tuesday. See if you can make your peace. And when you come home, treat it like it’s a new home.”</p>
<p>Wesley dragged his hand back over his head, then said slowly, “Yes, it’s my best chance. But what if he has a vision?”</p>
<p>“My crew. Kickin’ some demon ass. Havin’ me askin’ for help. I’ll check with Rondell tomorrow, but I know ‘em just fine. Where you gonna go?”</p>
<p>“Um. I think San Diego. The museums should keep me occupied.”</p>
<p>“ ‘n’ the zoo.”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “I wouldn’t have gone even before…” A gesture towards Angel’s door. “I can never forget that they’re locked in.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Course. You’ll call in the evening? Tell me ‘bout the museums. All you been doin’.” Smiling: “Pretend you’re missin’ me?” Knowing Wesley wouldn’t have to pretend, but curious how Wesley would say it.</p>
<p>Wesley slept with the receiver turned off that night, and he did sleep, and in the morning he shaved. Angel was in hell first thing on Saturday morning, but quiet, and Wesley was able to feed him and say goodbye to him. Gunn carried Wesley’s backpack down to the car, helped Wesley put the top down, and was startled and then delighted when Wesley turned the embrace by the door into a kiss, and not a short kiss; there was no one to see, but still, they were definitely in public.</p>
<p>After the kiss, Wesley held Gunn even tighter, then whispered in Gunn’s ear: “My love. My love. I’ll be more worth living with when I come back. I promise.”</p>
<p>“Wes. We all will. And you weren’t – Was difficult to watch, that’s all.”</p>
<p>Gunn stood on the sidewalk looking in the direction the car had gone, until it must have been halfway to the 110. Then he turned and went up to the apartment, to start finding out what it was like to have sole responsibility for a vampire seer.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Part Four</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Two or three times a day over the weekend, Gunn had his phone in his hand, about to dial Matt or Rondell. He was gonna ask what they were doing, if there was room for one more - and then he’d remember that he couldn’t go out to Caritas, he couldn’t join any game of pickup. Didn’t matter how bored he was with his own company, he had to stay with Angel. And he was halfway through calling Matt to see if the boys might want to come over for movies and pizza when he remembered they didn’t know Angel was a vampire. So of course he couldn’t ask them over. Not for their sake, it wouldn’t bother the boys for a second (would it?), but for Wesley’s sake. Wesley would imagine the word getting out, spreading from the boys to half L.A. - and then he’d be counting the days till the vampire-hunters broke down the door. Wesley had never told the truth to anyone except Gunn.</p>
<p>Yeah, but there was no reason he had to tell them about Angel being a vampire. No reason they had to find out at all. Gunn could turn the screen off, and if Angelus appeared and started talking, well, the boys already knew that Angel got violent, that he had bad mood-swings. But now Gunn was picturing the three of them standing in the room, looking round and seeing the screen, the bolts on the door, hearing the muttering, the growling and he realised he didn’t want them in the apartment after all, he didn’t want them to have to face the raw truth about how he and Wesley were forced to live. Probably, from what he’d told them about Angel, the truth wouldn’t be any worse than the things they must have imagined for themselves, but knowing for sure, that would have to change their whole attitude towards him. They’d still be friends, but not in the same way, not as simple, and he didn’t want to lose any of that. So he went to Blockbuster and he rented some movies just for himself, and he left the screen on and wondered what he’d have thought himself a year ago, if he’d somehow come across a room like this.</p>
<p>Angel didn’t seem to notice that Wesley was gone, acted with Gunn just the same way he acted with Wesley, like he couldn’t even see any difference between them. The colour of their skin, Wesley’s glasses, Wesley’s missing arm - no difference. Wesley’s words of reassurance, Gunn’s silence - no difference. Gunn was surprised at first, kept looking for some flicker of reaction, some sign that Angel knew it was a big deal, Gunn being there instead of Wesley. But then, like Wesley had said, Angel had spent a century learning what the guards were like in his hell, must have figured there was never any real difference between them, they were all monsters. A big deal to Gunn, Wesley being gone, but nothing at all to Angel.</p>
<p>“You haven’t asked about him.” The second time Wesley had called Gunn: Sunday afternoon and Wesley was about to settle in for an hour’s reading in a quiet courtyard in the Hotel Del Coronado. He was getting a kick out of being in the hotel from “Some Like it Hot”, but was also indignant that the film had been lying when it said the hotel was in Florida.</p>
<p>“I know you’ll tell me. If there’s anything I need to know.”</p>
<p>“Yeah.” But Gunn knew as he said it that he wouldn’t tell Wesley if Angel had been lucid. Wesley might think he needed to know that but he didn’t, and Gunn wasn’t going to let Wesley start all that again. “He’s been just the same.” And that was the truth.</p>
<p>Wesley was sounding so much better by Sunday, Gunn could tell almost from the first word. When Wesley had called on Saturday morning, just after he’d checked into his hotel, he’d been tired and distracted, with vague ideas about what he might do with the rest of the day, but sounding like he’d have to force himself to get back in the car again. But he had forced himself, and he’d done a few museums and got something out of each of them, and he’d eaten some good seafood and been to see “Enemy at the Gates”, and he’d slept very well. He’d decided to spend his Sunday staying close to the ocean and doing very little, and was thinking about going to the Wild Animal Park in Escondido, if he could get the proof he needed that it wasn’t like a zoo.</p>
<p>“People friendly? You get much of the ‘English’ thing?” The closest Gunn thought he could get to saying: “Haven’t you been lonely on your own? Have you missed me?” He didn’t even know if he should say it himself, that he was missing Wesley, because that might sound like he wished Wesley hadn’t gone.</p>
<p>“I haven’t really talked to anyone. I don’t get the English thing these days. I think the arm puts people off. Which is quite useful at the moment. Do you - Do you ever have days when you don’t want to have to pretend to be interested in other people?”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed. “Not whole days, no. Had a few tough hours since I first met you. Y’know, people to deal with when all I can think of is gettin’ you alone again.” Back when he was with his crew, really. The time they spent having to deal with Angel, that was different. Much more complicated.</p>
<p>Wesley was smiling. “I wish you were here. But you’d be bored.”</p>
<p>“Well. Yeah. Be tryin’ to drag you off to hire Jetskis, or something. ‘n’ you don’t need that, you need to do your boring museum, hotel, walking thing.”</p>
<p>“I do. I need to put in at least another two days this year. The British Boredom Council has already served me the written warning. If I don’t make my life significantly less interesting, I’ll be at risk of deportation.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley arrived home just before nine on Tuesday morning, much earlier than Gunn had expected. They kissed at the door and Wesley was half-hard right from the start, hungry and demanding like he’d been thinking about this since Irvine. Gunn was nearly as relieved - and pleased, and excited - as he had been the first time they’d kissed. Back then he’d wanted to get Wesley away from the front door, into the bedroom, to make it real, official. Now he just needed to get Wesley’s cock in his hand, to press himself against the heat of Wesley’s skin. They were noisy and urgent and clumsy, no co-ordination. Gunn took them down to the floor and tried to match their paces, but Wesley had too much of a head-start. No complaints, though. God, no.</p>
<p>“Gonna send you away every weekend, you come back like this.”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “I nearly came back last night. I was in a bar and… every other man who came in had something that reminded me of you. Just enough.”</p>
<p>“A gay bar?”</p>
<p>“Just a bar. Marines, I think. If I’d had less to drink, I’d have checked straight out of the hotel, been waking you up around three. Instead, I just had to imagine it. You were remarkably tolerant. In my imagination. Only made me apologise for five minutes for not calling to tell you I was on my way.”</p>
<p>“Um… Yeah, I don’t like surprises. Rather have the chance to plan. Five minutes sounds about right.”</p>
<p>A smile, full of good memories. “I learned my lesson.”</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t do more than glance at the screen until he’d unpacked, freshened up, and started a fresh pot of coffee. Angel was sleeping, on the floor near the foot of the mattress. “No visions?”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head. “A fake one yesterday. About Angelus.”</p>
<p>“Fake?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Figured they’re not messages. Quicker than sayin’ ‘a hallucination that looked a lot like a vision’. He was trying to get out the door. To get out and stop the thing happening. He still had the burns when I fed him last night.”</p>
<p>“He’s been difficult?”</p>
<p>“No. No surprises. Boring few days up here, too. Really glad you’re back.”</p>
<p>The training session was tough. It was their second session with Ain and Storra, and this pair were quite a lot different when Yan wasn’t with them. Not mean or anything, but you could tell now that they knew each other very well, and they had their own ideas about the worst type of opponent that Gunn and Wesley might have to face. Painful, and not really fair - in every mission so far they’d managed to keep the advantage of surprise. But life wasn’t fair and it was painful, and sometimes you would get beat to the ground. And you could stay there frozen with the shock and humiliation, or you could work out which limbs still had a useful range of movement and make yourself get up to face the next round.</p>
<p>Over the meal the duals said they wanted to try out Dargo Darkot, another demon bar.</p>
<p>“Yeah, it is close. But we can’t go in there, Wes ‘n’ me.” Dargo Darkot would not admit humans, no matter how many duals were there to vouch for them.</p>
<p>“No, I know.” A slight pause. “Look, we’re not trying to ditch you, but that is where we wanna go tonight.”</p>
<p>Wesley said, “But… you still have to get back to the portal.”</p>
<p>A shrug. “We can get a cab. No point in waiting on us. I was you, I’d go home and get a rubdown before you stiffen right up.”</p>
<p>Was that a dig? Or a couple of digs: about how hard they’d found the session, and about the two of them and sex. Or was it just sensible advice?</p>
<p>“We’ll pay for your taxi.” Wesley was getting his wallet out.</p>
<p>“No, man. It’s just a cab.”</p>
<p>They were home by ten thirty. Gunn said, “Y’know, rubdown sounds pretty good.”</p>
<p>“Um. I’ll do my best. You’ll have to be patient. I think I’ll be falling over onto you more than once.”</p>
<p>They decided that Gunn should get his rubdown first; no point in Wesley going first, if he was then going to get another set of aches and bruises falling over onto Gunn.</p>
<p>Wesley just managed not to fall over, by keeping down very low, and by leaning on Gunn as often and as hard as he needed. He started with the neck and shoulders and worked down.</p>
<p>At first Gunn was enjoying the rubdown just as a rubdown, but then Wesley’s hand moved down below his waist, and suddenly Gunn’s skin was turning every touch into sex. The feelings went to his cock first, but soon he was pushing his legs further apart, arching his ass up towards Wesley, nearly groaning with the need to have Wesley’s fingers inside him. “Put them in me. Dammit, don’t bother with - Put them in me.”</p>
<p>Wesley was breathing nearly as hard as Gunn but he wouldn’t do what Gunn was asking, he was insisting this was still a rubdown. “No. I need to work on your thighs.”</p>
<p>“Wes. Wes. D’you wanna relax me? Or d’you wanna make me really tense?”</p>
<p>“I want this.” Wesley’s fingers dug in just above Gunn’s knee and slid slowly upwards until they just touched the curve of Gunn’s ass. “I missed your thighs. All last night. I wanted this.” Down again to the knee, then kneading and pushing, trying to cover every inch.</p>
<p>“Just - That’s all you missed? In the whole weekend?”</p>
<p>“I always miss your thighs. From the moment you get dressed.”</p>
<p>At that Gunn sighed, and flexed his leg to push against Wesley’s hand. “That’s - I miss your stomach. Always wanna… push my fingers through the gap between the buttons.”</p>
<p>“I like that. You should. More often.”</p>
<p>“I will if you… Never mind missing my thighs. Think about missing my ass. Usually act… like you do.” Then he sighed again as Wesley’s hand relaxed its grip, very suddenly, moved quickly up, then spread itself wide around the curve of his ass; the thumb was in the crack, barely parting him but as exciting to Gunn as if it was already deep inside him.</p>
<p>“I don’t - I’m not ready to fuck you yet.” But the hand tilted and the thumb rubbed, and Gunn groaned. “I want your weight first. The bed was so empty. I need to be back with you.”</p>
<p>“You want your rubdown.”</p>
<p>“No, I’m…” A pause. “I wouldn’t last two minutes. But I need those two minutes. To feel… whole.”</p>
<p>“Now?”</p>
<p>“Soon. Please. After…” And the hand shifted, and Gunn gave a long sigh as a finger pressed slowly into him, eased slightly by the oil from the rubdown, but only slightly. Yes, it was about sex, obviously it was about sex, but the feeling of satisfaction, that seemed quite separate from the surge of heat in his cock, and stronger. He desperately wanted Wesley to fuck him, right now. He wanted to have Wesley under his hands, for minutes… hours… as long as they could last. He wanted whatever Wesley wanted.</p>
<p>“More?” Gunn wasn’t sure what this was doing for Wesley. Something, yes, but maybe not for the usual reasons, and maybe Wesley didn’t plan yet on giving him more. No response from Wesley for three seconds, maybe four, and then Gunn had two fingers inside him, sliding against one another as they pressed deeper. Gunn’s mouth filled with saliva, hot and sweet, and he was suddenly aching, aching to be able to hold Wesley. He turned over onto his side, nearly onto his back, reached up to support Wesley then lower him onto the bed. They took some moments then to fit themselves properly to one another, sort out the tangle of their legs, and then Gunn rolled on top of Wesley, and it seemed they both had all they wanted.</p>
<p>Afterwards, then they were back on their side, legs tangled again, Gunn said, “That was… Didn’t that seem like the first time? Like we’d only just met?” Except with the lights on. And with Gunn already knowing how much he loved being fucked.</p>
<p>“I suppose we… After everything I put us through in the last few weeks. Maybe we’ll need weeks to recover.”</p>
<p>Gunn smiled. “Fine by me. Like it when I feel I know you. ‘n’ when I know I don’t. You recovered most other ways, though?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “You saved me from... I don’t know what. Going nearly as mad as him. If you weren’t here…” A long, unsteady sigh.</p>
<p>“You’d’ve worked something out. It’d be different.” Not believing that, except that, yeah, it really would have been different. That Sunday, probably, when Angelus had just walked out of the room - Gunn couldn’t see them both surviving that. Maybe Wesley was thinking the same thing. But Gunn didn’t want Wesley being grateful to him, not like that. Too much like how Wesley had been grateful to Angel.</p>
<p>Wesley kissed him and it was a grateful kiss, too light, too short. “So when do you want a break? Where do you think you’ll go?”</p>
<p>Gunn was surprised. “Get stuck in a strange town on my own? C’n you see it? Got L.A. Got you. Everything I like’s right here. Why’d I need a break?”</p>
<p>Wesley stared at him, frowning slightly - then suddenly, with a smile: “You have a talent for being happy.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed, mostly amused, but maybe just a touch bitter, thinking of Alonna, the hard words between them in her last days. “I dunno, Wes. You’ve only seen me when I’m with you. You need that? Time away on your own?”</p>
<p>Another frown. “San Diego was… time away from him. Not from you. I would have preferred you there. If it was possible. I don’t need time on my own as long as I’m getting enough time to read. And you’ve always given me that.”</p>
<p>“But you don’t get bored on your own. You figure out ways to enjoy it.”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “That’s from a lifetime of practice. And it is useful for thinking. Being stuck in a strange town. It’s useful for getting new ideas. And for being able to think them through without distractions. I spent nearly three hours sitting in the courtyard at the Hotel Del. Not reading more than a few pages.”</p>
<p>“What were you thinking about?”</p>
<p>“About how much my views on demons have changed since you came to join us. Since you found Caritas and met Grouw and Piriti – and you saw the possibilities and made me see them too. Before that… Well, you saw the list I did for Grouw and Piriti of all the demons I’d met, the circumstances in which I met those demons. I used to think that ‘demon’ was synonymous with ‘evil’. And everyone I knew thought that, and every vision seemed to confirm it. So what do we make of the demons we’ve started to meet through Wyndham Gunn? What do we make of Grouw and Piriti and the duals?” Wesley shook his head. “I cannot see them as evil. And of course I have a vested interest in not seeing them as evil, since I want to go on being able to take their money. And able to accept their help. But it really does seem to me that most of them are…” A shrug. “They’re normal. Like the people you’d find in the grocery store. They’re just getting on with their lives. They don’t want to hurt anyone. Or if they do, they hold back from acting on it. Like people. Like most people.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Big change for me too. Takin’ up nest-buildin’ ‘n’ all. Guess we’re like cops been workin’ Homicide. Suddenly got put on Community Relations.”</p>
<p>“Exactly! I think the idea must have started when I was reading that cop novel with Angel. So now I’m wondering… just how unusual are the demons who feature in the visions? And I mean I want statistics. How many demons are there living peacefully in L.A. compared with the number who are dangerous? And what makes them dangerous? Were they always like that? Or do they turn? And what were they doing with themselves before we were sent after them? Especially if they were always like that?”</p>
<p>“Huh.” Interesting questions, put like that. Gunn had stopped wondering how many demons there were in L.A. as soon as he got confident that there were enough to keep Wyndham Gunn in business. “You think you could find out? They got an electoral register or something?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. But I’m going to ask. I want to do a systematic survey. Collect and analyse the answers.”</p>
<p>“Do a survey? They’re gonna think you’re from the IRS. Or the INS or worse. You go in handin’ out forms, you’ll never be seen again.”</p>
<p>“I know. We’ll need to take a very careful approach. Find something… subtle and imaginative.”</p>
<p>“‘We’?”</p>
<p>“ ‘I’. I know you’re busy already. It’s just that I can’t stop worrying at puzzles.”</p>
<p>“Was messin’ with you, English. ‘s a good puzzle. I’m in.”</p>
<p>Wesley made a start on the survey the next day, calling on a range of Wyndham Gunn clients and asking if they would talk to him to help him plan his research. Wesley didn’t use the word “survey”, said he simply wanted to satisfy his own curiosity, but about half of the demons he called were openly suspicious, asked if he was working for the government, maybe suspecting even worse. Most of the suspicious demons didn’t want to talk to him, but one did agree to a meeting - which made four meetings arranged, and Wesley decided that was enough for a first stage.</p>
<p>Wesley really was fired up by the idea of this survey. Gunn had never seen him with so much energy and enthusiasm, or at least not in a way that lasted day after day. Gunn could see now that Wesley had been taking their work far too seriously. Of course you wanted to be proud of what you were doing, interested, involved. You wanted to give the client a good result, for a fair price. But you could still relax and let yourself enjoy the work, it wasn’t like the clients were watching you every second, marking you like it was some test. Or it wasn’t for Gunn. Gunn was guessing, though, that Wes must never quite believe he’d done enough. If only he’d worked harder. Or quicker or longer. Then he could have done something more.</p>
<p>But with the survey there was nothing to take seriously, no client except maybe Wesley himself and so Wesley was finally free to relax. He was even enjoying making all these new phone calls. Hell! he was halfway to turning into an extrovert.</p>
<p>Gunn wondered if this was Wesley’s normal state, how you’d’ve found him if you’d met him back in England. Before he came to California. Before he met Angel. Which would mean that he’d been putting half of his energy into dealing with Angel. More than half. One thing to see that he was exhausted, but this change, coming almost overnight after he’d finally accepted that Angel was gone… What was he like before he met Angel?</p>
<p>No. No, Gunn was sure Wes hadn’t been anything like this. Not from what he’d said about all the stupid crushes he’d had, about wondering, any time someone hit on him, whether it was on a bet. Wesley had never had any time in his life when he’d gone into everything thinking, “And that’s what I’ll do when this guy says yes…” Being positive, being optimistic, that was Gunn’s own sign that he was back to normal, not Wesley’s.</p>
<p>“Back to normal.” OK. So he’d been trying to fit Wesley in with himself and Alonna, how he’d bounced back to being “the old Gunn” again, just days after she’d died. He hadn’t come even one step closer to understanding that, even after nearly a year. If he could think that Wesley had snapped “back to normal” in the exact same way, then his own reactions wouldn’t seem so wrong. So unnatural. Like Alonna had been a burden. Not the person who’d known him best. Loved him longest.</p>
<p>No comparison. Alonna and Angel. Nothing to learn there. Nothing. Wesley had given Angel more than he deserved. And Gunn had given Alonna less - so much less. Like they’d been nothing to one another.</p>
<p>“You ever… see someone you knew get turned into a vampire?” Sunday morning. They’d gone out training very early, showered, then gone out again to have breakfast. “I mean, so you saw how they were afterwards?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “There was someone I knew. But I didn’t see him. What about you?”</p>
<p>“Alonna. My sister.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked shocked, took a few seconds to process. “Was that why you started fighting? Organising the patrols?”</p>
<p>“We’d been doin’ that for years. Long before. It was a year ago. Couple of months before we met.”</p>
<p>Surprise, even more than shock. “You - I didn’t know. Only a few months? Is she still… Is the vampire -”</p>
<p>“I staked it. The same day. They turned her to use against me. Against the whole crew. But we got them all.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded slowly. “Did they send it in undercover? Was it able to pretend?”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head. “Wasn’t like that. It didn’t pretend. It tried to… sell me on being a vampire. How it was easy. Simple. Could leave my despair and rage behind.”</p>
<p>“Despair and rage?” Wesley was truly puzzled. “You?”</p>
<p>“You didn’t know me then. Been a bad few years. I… I got lost.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked at him, really looked at him. After a few seconds: “I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>“Don’t know how I let it get that bad. Stay that bad. Before I was always the one who could see a way to get things done. Was a reason it was my crew, really mine. Hundred reasons. Enough to make them stay, even when…”</p>
<p>“I know. I saw.”</p>
<p>“No. You saw me after. Way I was then, I’d’ve torn your card up ‘fore we even left the store.”</p>
<p>Wesley was frowning like he was remembering, thinking hard. “I find that difficult to imagine. But then I… I can’t imagine half of what you’ve been through.” Pained: “Your sister. I didn’t know.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded. “Hadn’t said anything before because…” He sighed. “ ‘s almost like I don’t believe it yet. I miss her. But just like I missed you this weekend. I haven’t even felt it yet. Not the way I should. That she’s gone, that we’ll never… That I didn’t look after her like I said I would.”</p>
<p>Wesley swallowed, and reached out to put his hand over Gunn’s. “Maybe it’s because of what you had to do at the end to protect yourself.”</p>
<p>A small shrug. “Y’d think that’d make it worse. Dunno. I do miss her. How we could speak in code. From all we’d seen together. I’d say, ‘Hey, it’s like…’ and she’d be nodding, and she was always right, she knew exactly what I was gonna say. ‘n’ that’s gone. Those things we’d seen together don’t seem half as real now that there’s just me.”</p>
<p>Again: “I’m sorry.” And Gunn could tell that he really was. Alonna would have liked Wesley. She’d have laughed at him, at the idea of her brother teamed up with all that English reserve, those shirts and ties. But she’d’ve liked him.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>“Lilah Morgan asked if we’d like someone to sit with Angel. When we’re out training. Or working on the survey. Or just working.” Wesley said it almost as a question, like he didn’t quite believe what he was saying.</p>
<p>“Someone like who?”</p>
<p>“An intern from her company. She said there are three or four. We’d just need to give them a day’s notice, not always that.”</p>
<p>“She knows what he’s like now?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “She always asks now. Since we got the eviction notice. She knows how long we’ve had to lock him in. How we’ve been using the tape-recorder. The intern would call us if he had a vision.”</p>
<p>“And then they’d - what? - bill us at the end of the month? I know Lilah’s helped us out, but that firm’s gotta be all about money.”</p>
<p>“Money and predictions. And apparently limitless curiosity about the vampire seer. I told her that he looks like any other mad vampire when he’s sleeping or cowering or gloating. And that they’d soon decide that there were better ways of using their interns’ time. But she said they’d all volunteered for a minimum of three months. It would be worth that much to their careers just to say they’d seen him, even sleeping. She wants me to meet them.”</p>
<p>“We could go out on a lot of dates in three months.”</p>
<p>“Yes. I thought that too. Not that we’d use their cover for that, but it’s an enjoyable idea, just to toy with.”</p>
<p>“We wouldn’t? We’d rather stay in? Enjoy some frisky ideas?”</p>
<p>Wesley smiled, but then shook his head. “We mustn’t forget it’s a gift. The interns volunteering. We have to use it responsibly. I can justify covering the training sessions. Maybe some of the work on the survey, if that does go ahead. But we can’t get into the habit of just leaving him. He’s our responsibility.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded, not surprised. Wes and responsibility. Never apart for long. “Be good to have them for Tuesdays and Fridays. She know about the duals?”</p>
<p>“No. She knows we have training sessions with other people, but she’s never asked anything more. She’s not interested in that aspect, in what we have to go out and do. Just in Angel and the power he’s in touch with because of his visions.” A sudden half-smile. “She’s about as subtle as Cordelia would have been. Do you want to come along to this meeting with the interns?”</p>
<p>“Nah. Go better without me. s’obvious you’re the expert on Angel and the visions.”</p>
<p>Wesley met the four interns on the Friday, and early in the evening on the following Tuesday, Lilah Morgan brought the first intern around to the apartment. Gunn knew from Wesley’s descriptions that this tanned, blond, straight-from-the-gym one must be Philip Moyes; a year ago it would have been work to remember the four names, but human names got so easy once you’d had to start dealing with demon names. Lilah wasn’t staying, but she wanted to hear the briefing, and of course the privilege of seeing the seer couldn’t be limited to a group of interns. Angel was awake and in hell, and visibly terrified of the new voices. Not just as new voices, but as new voices that were talking about him; Gunn knew that Angel was listening, from the angle of his turned head, the shudders of reaction.</p>
<p>The briefing was very short. Wesley pointed out the coffee, the tea, the sodas, the bread, cheese, salad. The bathroom. The cellphone numbers on the desk by the phone. The monitor and tape-recorder, which mustn’t be turned off. No need to warn Moyes not to go into Angel’s room, because Wesley had taken the key away. He’d locked the door to their bedroom, too, and locked his desk and the filing cabinets. Moyes had brought some work along, and was setting out the papers on the coffee table when they left.</p>
<p>Friday’s intern was called Julia Kepler and she arrived alone, while Angel was asleep. The next Tuesday’s was Thomas Li, and he got to see (and hear) Angelus. Seemed like Lilah Morgan had only needed the one look, but she definitely got the interns to report straight back to her, because she mentioned Angelus to Wesley when they met in the library on Wednesday morning. She offered more of the interns’ time, said they’d all be happy to do twice as much, but Wesley had said he didn’t want to take their time for granted, would rather save it for an emergency.</p>
<p>The fourth intern was Newton Robbins, very young, slightly awkward, and enough like Wesley that Gunn had to work hard not to imagine what he’d find if he slid his fingers between the buttons of that white shirt. Skinny white guys with glasses - the last kink he would have chosen for himself, if he’d been given a choice.</p>
<p>The duals must have been comparing notes, just the same as Lilah Morgan and the interns. Now they were all starting to ditch the humans, sometimes straight after the training session, not wanting a meal, just a ride to the night’s bar. Yeah, you had to take it personally, but Gunn could see why they’d want to be free to do their demon thing. They weren’t getting bored with Gunn and Wesley, but they saw all they needed in the two hours of training. That Friday Gunn and Wesley got ditched just after nine, and they decided that young Newton wouldn’t begrudge them a quick Vietnamese meal.</p>
<p>They had just finished the soup when Wesley’s cellphone rang. Angel was having a vision, and Newton was excited and impressed and flustered. Wesley got him to hold the phone by the monitor, and within seconds Wesley was asking Gunn to deal with the bill.</p>
<p>“Lafayette Park. By the fountain. ‘Out of the car.’ “ Not a fake vision. Gunn knew the list of old visions almost by heart, and Lafayette Park wasn’t in that list. “ ‘Two to turn. The rest for food.’ “ Wesley was frowning in concentration. “ ‘Moving up. Out of the green.’ “ A shrug, then, muttered: “I think that’s what he said.” More listening, then Wesley got Newton back, thanked him, and cut the connection. “Lafayette Park, definitely. Probably vampires. I don’t know how many.”</p>
<p>There was only one vampire, and Wesley got him with the crossbow. “ ‘Out of the green.’ “ Wesley was holding up a green robe, shaking the dust out of it. “This is probably not what he had in mind.”</p>
<p>“That’s one cheesy-lookin’ robe. Someone tell him it was the new black cape?”</p>
<p>The rescued couple had decided they’d been caught in some fraternity prank, and the frat-boy must have run off. They were angry now, not scared. They wanted to know who was going to pay for the damage to the car, and they drove off without one word of thanks - if anything, they blamed Gunn and Wesley for letting the frat-boy go and not getting his name.</p>
<p>So back to the apartment, taking the robe as a souvenir for Newton. Angel was lost in the vision. He was striding round the room, standing tall, gesturing, repeating, “Two to turn. The rest for food,” like he expected to reach even the deaf couple upstairs. And then he was suddenly calling desperately about Lafayette Park, stumbling towards the wall, nearly slipping on sheets of drawing paper, and banging on the wall, dragging his hands over it.</p>
<p>“I think he’s trying to draw on the wall.” Sounded like this was the best night of Newton’s life. Was that gleam pure ambition? Raw curiosity? Or was he enough like Wesley to be thinking that this was the most important thing he’d ever done? “He used up all of the pad. And the board.” There had been at least ten sheets left. “The crayon broke when he started on the wall. So he’s been doing this. Has he always drawn or only since he got this bad?”</p>
<p>Wesley gave the basics about Angel and the drawing and the visions. They all had a beer and Newton gradually wound down. He asked what had happened in the park, which should have got him all impressed again. And yeah he was angry with the couple for being so ungrateful, but the more Newton said, the more it sounded to Gunn like he thought the fights were easy, like the vision was some kind of guarantee. No real danger ‘cos they had the Powers standing guard over them from start to finish.</p>
<p>No, Newton wasn’t as bad as that, but he wasn’t making nearly enough of the right noises, not to suit Gunn. And he didn’t seem to have any reaction to Angel except fascination – like they were lucky to be locked in with this creature and its shattered mind. Gunn wasn’t looking for hero-worship, that would be creepy, but a normal person would have to…well, know that it would be normal to notice. Newton Robbins was an over-ambitious jerk, and Gunn wasn’t going to be troubled by any more thoughts about the buttons on his shirt.</p>
<p>Or maybe Newton was just young. He was thrilled by the robe, assumed it was the mark of some ancient vampire line, and that Wesley must know all about it, including the exact meaning and history of the symbol on the triangular patch. Wesley said he’d look in his books and get back to Newton ( it was a puzzle, so of course he would) and while Wesley was drawing the symbol for reference, Gunn asked Newton about the internship. What else did they have him doing, did he work mostly for Lilah, what were his other plans?</p>
<p>“I’m sorry. I can’t talk about that.”</p>
<p>“What? It’s a trade secret who you fetch lunch for? Bring down the whole firm?”</p>
<p>Newton shrugged and smiled, looking suddenly years older, much more in control. “It’s just the rule. We can’t say anything.”</p>
<p>“Man. And you wanna work for this firm?”</p>
<p>“Oh, yes. You wouldn’t believe the opportunities.” The gleam again. Gunn shrugged, and glanced at his Wesley, and wanted the intern gone.</p>
<p>An hour or so later, in bed, Wesley said, “Do you think we’d have gone for the meal tonight? If we’d left Angel alone?”</p>
<p>“Probably. We’d planned on being gone till past midnight. We still need to eat. Duals or no duals.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded, slowly. “We would have come back to what he said on the tape. And when we got to the park it would have been too late. And we would have known, because the car would be there with the windows broken and the doors hanging open.”</p>
<p>“And we’d never eat Vietnamese again. Not even to go.”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed, frowning. “I don’t know. Allowing ourselves a quick meal after training. I think we’ve earned that. I’d feel bad that we’d missed the vision. I’d feel terrible knowing we could have saved the couple if we’d gone straight home. But I don’t think I’d feel that I’d done something wrong personally, that I needed to punish myself. I think I’d be able to accept that some parts of life are just luck, and that couple had hit bad luck, as hundreds of other people do every day. I wouldn’t have said that a year ago. Back then I’d be fully occupied with finding some way to exorcise the guilt. I have changed.”</p>
<p>“A year ago it was just you and Angel. Him gettin’ worse. Guess you would be be thinkin’ ‘bout punishment. ‘bout the visions as punishment for him, I mean. But it’s you ‘n’ me now. ‘n’ yeah we got room for luck.”</p>
<p>By morning, Angel was out of the vision and in hell, and Wesley took the blood in as soon as he was dressed. He started collecting drawing pages while Angel was drinking, and immediately called Gunn in.</p>
<p>“Look, this isn’t the park. It’s a theatre. Boarded up? That does say ‘Palace’, doesn’t it?”</p>
<p>“And this looks like people in a cage. Could be anywhere. But I guess not the park.”</p>
<p>Gunn collected the rest of the pages and then they stood over Angel, who held the half-empty beaker out to Wesley. “Finish it.” Angel did, in a single messy mouthful; they were going to have to shower him again, and it had only been three days.</p>
<p>Gunn booted up the computer and searched for the Palace Theatre. He found it quickly, in Westwood, but kept on looking through the search results for any hint about the connection to Lafayette Park. The connection was on the third page of results, in a Department of Justice report on Doug Sanders, a motivational speaker who was wanted for his involvement in pyramid schemes and who’d been missing for months. The report said he’d done a lot of his speaking out of the Palace Theatre and it also showed the logo for one of his schemes, which was the exact same symbol that Wesley had copied from the patch on the green robe. So… a vampire wearing that logo and talking about “moving up”. And Angel striding round, making those big gestures, hammering that slogan, over and over: “Two to turn, the rest for food.” They could assume Doug Sanders was a vampire now, but running the same scam in much the same way.</p>
<p>The theatre was locked up tight, but Gunn knew five people who could deal with that, and one of them (Scott) was there in half an hour, and then Gunn and Wesley were creeping in with all the crossbows and stakes they could carry. The cage that Angel had seen was on the stage, about twenty people inside, most of them curled on the ground asleep. There was a vampire standing guard. Well, sitting guard, probably also asleep. But there was a massive chain and padlock on the door of the cage and there were probably more vampires in the building. Was there a smart way of doing this, that would save all of those people and put a final stop to Sanders’ career? They backed out of the building and returned to the truck to talk.</p>
<p>Their lock-breaker Scott was having a coffee around the corner, waiting to lock up the theatre again. They could take him in, kill the guard and open the cage, all quiet enough that the other vamps should sleep right through. But when the vamps found the empty cage… No chance of a surprise attack after that.</p>
<p>Well, they couldn’t leave those people in the cage. Of course they couldn’t. They’d have them out within an hour, no matter what.</p>
<p>But what if they replaced them with another group of people, all with weapons and training? The vamps wouldn’t notice the difference, it was just a crate of food. Scott could fix the chain and the padlock so the cage could only be opened from the inside. Be an even better surprise if they had other people hidden all round the theatre. Maybe Sanders would hold a meeting that night, reel off his slogans, dole out rewards, get his team all motivated. Or maybe there’d just be him and his henchmen, coming down to feed. Either way, it’d be a good haul of vamps.</p>
<p>“Would your crew do it? Would any of them be willing to go in the cage?”</p>
<p>“Think they’d be fighting for the chance.” Gunn called Rondell, who loved the idea and brought in all of the crew who were at the base when Gunn called. This gave them twenty-six people including Gunn and Wesley; they’d put twelve in the cage and the rest around the building.</p>
<p>As soon as they’d agreed on the plan and handed out roles, the rescue party went in. Wesley and George stayed in the theatre after everyone was out, on watch for any other vamps appearing. Rondell talked to the people from the cage, learned that there was a meeting on that night, could bring in up to a hundred vamps. And add the gang of seven or eight who ran the meetings… A very good haul.</p>
<p>Gunn and his cage-crew went in first, with the idea that they’d provide a diversion if any of the snipers got into trouble while moving into position. The snipers were organised in four teams, each with its own zone of the building; they went in a team at a time, in order of their distance from the back door. Scott fixed the door so it would seem locked to the vamps but would open to the crew with a simple trick, then he went home and they were left to wait.</p>
<p>At around two in the afternoon a small, dark-haired female vampire was suddenly on the stage near the cage. She must have come from the wings, to be able to get there so quietly. She looked around for the guard, wasn’t at all worried not to find him, just muttered “Typical,” then gave a broad, jagged smile as she turned to the cage. Her arm thrust into the cage, lightning-quick, and she caught Taye’s wrist and pulled so he slammed against the bars - and then she was dust. Worth every second of the wait, and the cage-crew couldn’t help letting out some of their feelings of triumph. They heard themselves immediately, though, and cut it dead. Maybe it had sounded like a cry of panic… but was that normal from the cage in the middle of the afternoon? The people hadn’t said anything to Rondell about the days, just about the nights.</p>
<p>The sound must have been fairly normal, because the next vampire took ten minutes or more to arrive, and she was just wondering what “Lisa” was up to. But this one didn’t think it was “typical” to have two missing vampires. She looked properly, and she saw the sprinkling of dust around the chair and by the cage, and she didn’t really believe it but she looked at the humans in the cage, testing out the wild idea that there might be something in there other than terrified food. And maybe someone met her eyes, or maybe she saw a stake or maybe she could just smell the difference. She ran for the wings, shouting that something had happened to the food. They stopped her with the crossbows, but too late: the other vamps were on their way.</p>
<p>The fight was over quickly and then they all went for ice-cream. The ice-cream was Rondell’s suggestion, and Rondell also took charge of organising the new plan: picking off any vampires who showed up for the night’s meeting. He chose the four best shots (including Wesley), with eight others on reloading duty (including Gunn). The meeting started at nine, so they’d come back at eight-thirty and take up their positions.</p>
<p>The crew was going to Venice Beach for the rest of the afternoon. All agreed they needed a game of pickup to let off steam after all that waiting.</p>
<p>“You play pickup?” George to Wesley. Not a surge of curiosity about English customs, but an invitation. To Wesley. From a member of the crew. Gunn couldn’t let himself smile, couldn’t look at either of them - too close already to having a stupid, happy glow.</p>
<p>“I - Uh. No. No, I don’t play.” Wesley too surprised to manage to sound pleased. Would George manage to hear it as more than a flat no?</p>
<p>“Guess y’don’t watch it, either?” Still friendly. Maybe even a joke.</p>
<p>Wesley smiled. “I don’t really watch anything except films.”</p>
<p>“Yeah? Hey, you seen ‘Minority Report’ ?” Quickly, like he’d just been reminded of something.</p>
<p>Wesley hadn’t, since it was Tom Cruise (and, anyway, it wasn’t out on video yet), and George hadn’t seen it either, but they traded what they’d heard; and steadily worked out how to talk to one another about something other than ambush tactics.</p>
<p>Rondell asked Gunn if he was coming to the park, but Gunn shook his head. “Things t’do.” Get back to Angel, mostly. “Next time.” When there was a ‘next time’ that wasn’t an emergency.</p>
<p>Angel was asleep. They could have gone to the beach. They talked about heading out again, wanting some sun after those hours shut in the theatre. But when Wesley asked if Gunn wanted to go and find the crew, Gunn realised that he didn’t need sun nearly as much as he needed to be alone and naked with Wesley. Not for sex - or not immediately, anyway - but listening to Wesley and George had made him feel so close to Wesley. So glad to be with him. And when he felt like that the first thing he needed was to close the gap, to be touching Wesley.</p>
<p>Wesley wanted the sex, which was how Gunn put the suggestion: that he was in the mood for slow, very slow. Wesley was far enough behind Gunn, though, that he was still thinking about wanting sun. Not a difficult choice, but he couldn’t hide the fact that it was a choice.</p>
<p>“We’ll go out tomorrow. Or… Look. Is that enough there to give you your L.A. feeling? Enough for today?” There was sunlight coming through the blinds in the living room, making a grid on the carpet a few feet from the window.</p>
<p>Wesley laughed, said it was perfect, drew Gunn into the light and started to undress him. It wasn’t quite the first time they’d had sex in that room, but the first time they’d really made the choice. The first time they’d been naked. Angel woke up about twenty minutes in: they heard sudden movements, low snarling. The screen was angled away but Wesley didn’t think it was Angelus, since Angelus usually talked. Angel angry then, for some reason, or hallucinating. They lay quietly and listened for a while, not disturbed, just curious; until Wesley raised himself up and they started again with a kiss.</p>
<p>That night, Gunn was in a team with Jackson, the marksman, and Jed, the other loader. Jackson had been with the crew for two, three years, and Jed had joined a couple of weeks after Gunn had last seen him at the shelter, which had been the night of Angel’s first fake vision. They were busy for the first half hour, taking their share of the twenty prompt vamps, but in the next hour there were less than half that number in stragglers, and they passed the time in talking and in playing games with lists. Jed knew, now, exactly how Gunn had come to leave his crew; not that he talked about it directly, but Gunn could tell that he had the full background. Or the chilled-out version of the full background, anyway, where the shock and the anger were fading memories, and the crew had come out fine, and Gunn hadn’t changed so very much, after all.</p>
<p>There couldn’t be anyone left in the crew who needed to talk of Wesley as a freak, or ask what it said about Gunn that he’d choose a man like that over his own kind. Maybe there were still some who thought it but they kept it to themselves now, even when someone like Jed appeared with his questions and new stories about Gunn and Wesley. Just confirmation, really, of what Gunn had seen earlier that day, but Gunn could take any amount of that kind of confirmation.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley was going to get to do his survey. Not really the survey he’d hoped to do and it might not even go halfway to answering his original questions, but it would still be a damn good start. Their main support was coming from the demon business-community, who had no problem at all with Wesley doing their marketing research for free. They gave him any introductions that he asked for, and about half of the ideas that he ended up using.</p>
<p>Wesley used the computer for a lot of his work on the survey. Gunn offered to type in the information from the forms, but a lot of them weren’t in English, and anyway Wesley wanted to be able to deal directly with his own survey database. He really was quite possessive about it; not in the way of wanting Gunn to back off, but anything Gunn could do with the database, Wesley wanted to be able to do just as well.</p>
<p>There were more demons in L.A. than Wesley would ever have guessed, and many more demon languages, as he discovered when he started asking what languages were spoken inside the household. He made a second database for the languages, and by the beginning of May he’d decided that there were at least eighteen main groups. For some groups, he knew three or four languages (well enough to issue an invoice, at any rate, or to decide if a particular document was about jam-making or about ritual sacrifice); but about half of the groups were a complete mystery to him, and of course he wasn’t going to leave it like that. His next project, when he’d finished the survey, would be to reach at least an invoicing level for one language in each of the missing groups.</p>
<p>The first week in May also saw their first practical use of the survey database: to identify the most-likely place to find a Haklar demon that Angel had seen in a vision. Haklars were not the form-completing type, but several other demons had complained to Wesley about the Haklar that had forced people out of the North Shore of Lake Hollywood, and Wesley had put it in, marked as “hearsay”.</p>
<p>That was a busy week. Not just the Haklar (and the survey and training and work), but also Rondell calling them in to help against some vampires who were stalking homeless people in McKenzie Park. They were up for most of Friday and Saturday night, doing more of that waiting; and with the four interns on emergency duty with Angel for the first time. The interns were all very matter-of-fact about taking their four or five hours of nightshift. Newton took the first half of Friday night, including training, Philip Moyes took the second half, and then Julia Kepler and Thomas Li did Saturday. Maybe they were used to doing nights, Lilah making them live on London time one week, Tokyo time the next.</p>
<p>Wesley got George out of a tight spot in the park on Saturday night. Not that either George or Wesley was saying that Wesley had “saved George’s life” against the vampires, but George was obviously very, very glad that Wesley had been so close. George didn’t really know how to thank Wesley, though, since he’d seen - practically from that night at the thrift shop - that Wesley didn’t do high-fives or back-thumping, so instead he kept doing things to include him. Wesley said “no” or “I don’t know” about half the time, but he said it the right way.</p>
<p>Angel had a vision on Sunday evening, of a young woman with long hair and glasses, standing in a library reading from a large book, with a mist demon rising behind her, about to attack her. Or maybe it was a type of water demon? Something swirling and obviously threatening. Angel talked about the “public library”, that the demon was going to “swallow her”.</p>
<p>The central library had shut about an hour ago. Wesley said Angel used to know an underground route into the library; he’d gone there to do research back before Doyle persuaded him that they needed a computer. But he’d never taught the route to Wesley. So… they could go down there and try to break in aboveground, or they could wait until it opened on Monday. Why would the girl be there on a Sunday, anyway? Unless she’d broken in herself, and she didn’t look like the breaking-in type. They’d been given some warning for a change, maybe to give Wesley a chance to read up on how to kill a mist demon.</p>
<p>They made photocopies of Angel’s drawing and cut the demon out, then they shared out the list of departments and went around the library asking if anyone had seen the girl in the picture. Gunn was the one who found someone who recognised her: the woman at the desk in the Science Department. The girl was Winifred Burkle (or “Fred”), and she’d disappeared from the Foreign Language Department five years ago. There had been flyers all over the library, but no one had ever found even a single clue. She’d been studying physics, working part-time in the library. She was supposed to be shelving books on the morning she disappeared. And why was Gunn asking? Where did he get that picture?</p>
<p>“I’m a private detective. Been sent to look for her.”</p>
<p>“Oh! Has there been… Is there any hope?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged and looked uncomfortable. “There’s always some hope, yeah? But after five years, you… Mostly you think about knowing.”</p>
<p>The librarian found him a copy of the flyer, and he wrote his name and number for her on the back of another copy and then went out into the corridor to call Wesley.</p>
<p>They met at the nearest coffee stand and then took their coffee into the gardens. “It’s a fake vision. That far in the past.” But Wesley was frowning as they spoke.</p>
<p>Gunn nodded, seeing the problem just as well as Wesley. “Yeah, but how did Angel know about it? ‘cos he never saw it in a vision. Unless… he had something to do with it?”</p>
<p>Definitely: “No. He was in New York five years ago. He must have seen the flyers when he came to the library. Maybe they’re still stuck up in some of the corridors he used. Maybe she looks like someone who Angelus… She does look a lot like Drusilla. But why he would imagine her being attacked by a mist demon… Maybe it’s a pun. I don’t know.”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Y’know dreams. ‘And then there was this mist demon. Only it wasn’t really a mist demon, it was that guy who used to park cars at the Italian place.’ Dream, hallucination, s’all just stirred in together.” Wesley laughed and agreed, and they finished their coffee without hurrying and then went home.</p>
<p>That evening, over dinner, Gunn said, “Who’s Drusilla? What did Angelus do to her? ‘n’ I know I’m gonna wish I never asked.”</p>
<p>“He tormented her until he drove her insane. Killed everyone she cared about and then he turned her into a vampire.”</p>
<p>“Is she still alive? Or - Y’know what I mean.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “Angel met her again quite recently. But she’s supposed to be in South America now. She’s still insane.”</p>
<p>“Well, y’don’t get over…” Gunn swallowed. “I thought… When you said, I just thought she might have been his sister.”</p>
<p>A long, pained pause, then Wesley said, “He did have a sister. He killed her. He killed all his family.” Another pause. “He didn’t turn them.”</p>
<p>“I figured. That he killed them. You think there’s somethin’ tells a vamp to start with family?”</p>
<p>“I don’t…” A sigh. “Maybe it’s part of discovering that you don’t feel guilt any more. The ultimate proof. I don’t know how much they get from instinct.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Makes sense.” Gunn’s turn to pause. “You’ve never… What about your family? You got any sisters? You’d’ve told me already if they’d been -”</p>
<p>A very difficult question for Wesley: guilt, pain, embarrassment, and more, all tightly-drawn. But not grief. Gunn wished he’d found a better way to ask. But now he was really wondering, he really did want to know.</p>
<p>Eventually, gaze fixed on his hand around his glass of water, Wesley said, “I never had a sister. Although I was always going to have one, until it was finally too late. A particular type of sister, of course.” A deep sigh, then Wesley raised his head. “I was supposed to be a girl. They were so certain. The right type of girl.”</p>
<p>Supposed to be a girl? Wesley? Gunn shook off the idea briskly and said, “What type? Like… Liz Hurley or something?”</p>
<p>“A slayer. A vampire slayer. It’s…” Wesley closed his eyes briefly, dragged his hand back through his hair, and then started to tell Gunn about ancient prophecies and forces in balance, and this one-and-only superchick. Who was in Sunnydale and wouldn’t you know it?</p>
<p>Wesley supposed to be a superchick? Nope, idea still bouncing straight off. “So that’s why you came here? To… I dunno… take her back to meet your family? Guess it’s a big deal over there.”</p>
<p>“In my family it is. The last two English slayers were both in my family. And a large proportion of potential slayers. It gives my family… It gives them a position to which they have become accustomed.”</p>
<p>“And you were letting the side down?”</p>
<p>“Not so much that as… irrelevant. Though, yes, there was a lot of planning done for ‘the girl’. For when she arrived. When they got good luck.”</p>
<p>“Man. Finally gettin’ why you were OK with bein’ sent to that school. That’s wrong, Wes. That’s so wrong.”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged and sighed. “I tried to make up, but… how do you make up for being the wrong person?” He sounded sad, but calm, like he’d sounded sometimes in the last lucid days with Angel. When Angel had said he didn’t want Wesley “either”, had he known about all this? Gunn wasn’t going to ask.</p>
<p>“But you went to Sunnydale for them?”</p>
<p>“Not for them. Not directly for them. But definitely because of them. Their influence got me the job. I was qualified. On paper. But hardly suitable. I knew that but… I didn’t know what to do about it. I never have known.”</p>
<p>Angel had thought he was useless. That’s what Wesley had said about him and Angel and how they’d known each other in Sunnydale. Apart from the crush on Cordy, that was almost all he’d said about the time in Sunnydale. “Well, why would you even want the job? Being around one of those girls after what you’d grown up with?”</p>
<p>“Because I believed in what we were all doing. I’d always believed in it. It was… a privilege to be involved, as it is here with the visions. I didn’t see myself on the front line then, I was happy doing research. Studying languages wouldn’t… I was good at it. The people there even liked me. But my family didn’t… It was just like when they moved me from my school to the Watcher’s Academy and used their influence. When it was obvious…” Wesley shook his head, voice becoming ragged. “How do you convince people that you’re not a management spy? That you know you don’t deserve… You want to do better and you want to ask for help, but they’ve all agreed not to talk to you.” A long sigh. “I shouldn’t even have cared about that, when you consider what a slayer faces.”</p>
<p>“Course you should care!” Gunn reached across the table and clamped his hand around Wesley’s wrist. “Did Angel treat you like that? In Sunnydale?”</p>
<p>“Angel didn’t really talk to anyone except Buffy. And he didn’t know about my family, none of them did. They might not even have cared. They gave me more chance than - It could have been a fresh start for me but I did everything wrong. You would have… disowned me.”</p>
<p>Gunn swallowed. “Y’can’t go home?”</p>
<p>A shrug. “They fired me but they didn’t get my Green Card cancelled. I don’t know how they’ve been dealing with my failure between them. How much it’s damaged… It was my father’s birthday on Thursday. Last year I sent a card but this year… I think I did believe that I would call him. But then I couldn’t imagine him even letting me get the words out. I should have asked you to make me call him.”</p>
<p>“Y’wanna call now? Few days late is better than nothing.” Part of Gunn wanted to tell Wesley to just forget about his family, that they didn’t deserve him. But you didn’t badmouth a man’s family, even if he was standing there begging you to do it. You’d never come out of that clean, ‘cos it always went deeper than you’d ever guess. And if you loved him and believed in him more than his family did (more than anyone had?), there were a hundred better ways of proving it. If Wesley needed to try to make things right, then Gunn would help him; and help him too if that family still wanted things to stay wrong.</p>
<p>“It’s five o’clock in the morning. Yes, I could call tomorrow. I’ll be awake all night, though, trying to decide what to say.”</p>
<p>Wesley did call the next day but Gunn never knew what Wesley managed to say, because they’d agreed that Gunn would go out to buy breakfast while Wesley was making the call. Wesley didn’t look up from his translation when Gunn got back, which pretty-much answered Gunn’s question but he went ahead and asked it anyway.</p>
<p>“Oh. He had a speech prepared. Quite short. He must have used it on half the council already. So routine he hardly even raised his voice. ‘After all they’d done for me.’ ‘They’d always spoiled me.’ ‘If only he’d done more to teach me some real character.’ As I said, it was short.” A shrug and a brief sound that might have been a laugh. “But before he hung up he did remind me about my mother’s birthday in July. And told me to send a card and to call on the right day. She’ll probably give me the same speech.”</p>
<p>Gunn put his hand on Wesley’s shoulder. “You did a brave thing, Wes.”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “I’d heard most of that before. The Council gave me a backlog of sixteen years of bad reports. With detailed comparisons. I was expecting the other sixteen years.”</p>
<p>Yeah, that was why it was brave. “Be easier next time. You tell him about the survey? How much you’re doing here?”</p>
<p>“I mentioned that I was calling from L.A. He didn’t really ask anything. He assumed I’d be staying away indefinitely.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded, then tightened his grip on Wesley’s shoulder. “You OK?”</p>
<p>“Shaky, even if most of that’s relief. I’ll be better after a few hours’ hard work. Especially if I can look forward to a date this evening.”</p>
<p>“You can choose the dinner and the movie.”</p>
<p>Gunn wished he could ask Angel what Wesley had really been like in Sunnydale. Had it been that obvious that he’d spent most of his life with people who didn’t trust him, that he’d learned to expect that he wouldn’t be wanted anywhere? And had Angel seen him change? The change must have come with getting fired. Finally free of all that slayer crap that he’d been born into, that he’d really believed in, the poor bastard. Finally able to make some choices of his own. Well… able to make them till the Kungai had taken his arm, and the Powers had given him to Angel. But that was only how Angel had seen it. Wesley had had a choice, and he’d made it. And then he’d chosen Gunn.</p>
<p>It was kind of a pathetic story. Spoiled rich boy. Parents didn’t care enough but they still got him chances other people had been trying to earn for years. Yeah, you could drown in the tears at that Support Group.</p>
<p>But Wesley didn’t tell it like he was sorry for himself. Sure it’d been tough and he wouldn’t wish it on anyone, and he didn’t hide from Gunn how much it could still hurt him. But he didn’t think it made him special or gave him an excuse. He hadn’t made any habit of dragging around all the things that would’ve been better “if only”. He’d decided what he believed in and he’d done what he could with what he’d been given. Like Gunn with his family and then with the streets and the crew.</p>
<p>Gunn didn’t like to think how lonely Wes must have been. Not totally lonely for every day of those sixteen years - he’d been happy, hadn’t he? when they’d left him alone to be with books and book-people - but bad enough for long enough to drive most people crazy. That was all over, thank God, it was long past. Wesley was happy now, and from much more than just books.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Angel was going through a phase of complaining about his food. Pig’s blood wasn’t good enough for him any more, and by the middle of May he was refusing more than half of his meals. Even with Wesley ordering him to drink (and Wesley could be chilling when giving orders), he’d take at most two mouthfuls and act like it was choking him. Wesley got him some calves’ blood then some goats’ blood and then some lambs’ blood, but Angel was anything but grateful for the change.</p>
<p>They already knew, though, that Angel wasn’t just looking for some variety. No. Angel was yearning for human blood. They’d suspected from the way he’d started staring at the veins on Wesley’s wrist, from the way he was following their scent; but they knew for sure on the day Wesley went in with a paper-cut on his hand. Yearning really was the word: a hopeless longing. Even when the sight or the smell made Angel vamp up, he didn’t act threatening or demanding, he acted like he knew he was never going to get anything. But the animal blood was so much less than what he needed, and since he had no memory, he had to experience the same tragic disappointment over and over again. “Tragic” was Wesley’s word, added after the lambs’ blood (which had been expensive and not exactly easy to find).</p>
<p>They had to assume he’d get over it when he got hungry enough, but that might take months and they also had to assume he could turn dangerous at any moment. Angelus seemed to be going through the same phase, though the effects were less obvious since they never tried to feed Angelus and he was always openly thirsting for blood; but since Angel had started this yearning, Angelus had been savage, loud enough to wake them some nights.</p>
<p>Wesley thought it must be the interns: having the scent of new people in the apartment after his world had closed down to just Wesley and Gunn. Wesley watched Angel on the screen while Gunn opened the door to the night’s intern, and there was definitely… an awareness. Quiet and hopeless from Angel, loud and demanding from Angelus. And wasn’t he at his worst on the days immediately after?</p>
<p>On the third Tuesday of Wesley’s watching, when it was Newton at the door, Wesley saw Angel vamp up, and he and Gunn spent the drive to the portal wondering if Angel would ever adjust and take the new scents for granted, or whether it would be safer (and kinder) to stop using the interns. Wesley didn’t think it would be awkward telling Lilah they’d changed their minds; he’d tell her they’d realised that new people made Angel disturbed and they’d offer to take them all out for a meal, as a small way of thanking them.</p>
<p>That evening’s duals were in a sociable mood, enough to talk at length over noodles and then to choose a bar that tolerated humans. Wesley asked them about their experience of prisoners adjusting to new guards, and they soon guessed he was asking for a reason, and asked him in turn what was happening with his sick friend.</p>
<p>Suddenly: “Is he a demon?” Gunn thought Wesley had been doing a smooth, blood-free translation, but maybe they’d picked up something about Angel’s sense of smell.</p>
<p>“Half demon.” Still smooth. “He’s half Brachen. He usually appears entirely human except in times of stress.”</p>
<p>“So you know he’s stressed-out by these people?” Wesley nodded, and the duals spent most of the rest of the meal trying to find a fair comparison to Angel.</p>
<p>“Why d’you make him a Brachen demon?” It was nearly eleven and they were on their way home, with the duals still in the bar.</p>
<p>“Doyle was half Brachen. I learned something about them. And in a way Angel is half demon. It seemed the simplest way to explain him.”</p>
<p>Newton wasn’t at the apartment when they got home, and instead they found themselves talking to a man twice Newton’s age who introduced himself as Holland Manners and looked like he should’ve been playing the kindly uncle on some hokey sitcom. Turned out he was the head of Lilah’s section but he’d been glad to help out when Newton had called around ten to say his mother had just been rushed to hospital and he needed to find one of the other interns to cover for him. Manners said he’d just arrived and he’d been about to call them to tell them what had happened.</p>
<p>“He could have called us. We would have come straight back.” Wesley wasn’t happy, but Manners seemed to hear it as concern for Newton.</p>
<p>“I don’t think he was thinking clearly. In fact, I told him not to call you. I thought his tone would worry you, when there really was no need.” Manners apologised again for the intrusion but without any hint that he would ever have handled things differently. Still the kindly uncle, but easier now to imagine him as Lilah’s boss. “So that’s Angelus.” Manners nodded at the screen, though Angelus wasn’t in view at that moment: he was at the door, and his snarls sounded like he had teeth all along his throat. He was clawing and kicking and using his full weight and they could hear that he was getting burned and that he didn’t seem to care. “How long did it take you to get used to this?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Nothin’ to get used to. Door’s bolted. Windows’re solid. Complainin’s the most he can do.”</p>
<p>Manners soon left and they showered and went to bed. Wesley was really annoyed about Newton and Manners, seemed tense enough that he’d be losing sleep over it.</p>
<p>“We’ll have to wait for… oh, at least another two weeks now. Until well after Newton’s next shift. Or it’ll look as if we’re stopping it because they screwed up. Lilah’s intern and Lilah’s boss. We can’t afford to end it like that. We can’t afford to put her on the defensive.”</p>
<p>“I know, Wes. But it’s only a couple more weeks. Angel’s not gonna starve. Not even showin’ his cheekbones yet. Day Five of the diet. Max.”</p>
<p>When they got up on Wednesday morning they found that Angel was naked; looked like he’d torn his clothes off and shoved them under the mattress. He was either hallucinating or in hell, and either way he was extremely angry.</p>
<p>They weren’t going to try to feed him, but they would prefer him dressed again, so they decided they’d give him clean clothes and hope he’d soon put them on. Gunn dealt with the door then stood guard with the holy water while Wesley went in with the clothes. Angel was crouched at the far side of the room but he leapt to his feet with a growl when Wesley stepped into the room, kept on growling while Wesley was placing the clothes on the floor, and then the moment Wesley started to tell him to get dressed, he launched into an attack. Wesley was ready and got out cleanly, Gunn pulled the door closed and slid the bolts; and then they were listening to Angel burning again. Attacking the door while he was naked: that was a new definition of angry.</p>
<p>“He already had burns over half his face. Did you see any of that?” Gunn shook his head. He’d been watching the monitor so he’d only seen Angel in greys. “His hands looked raw and there were deep marks on his arms. He must have bitten himself too, I suppose when he was throwing himself against the door. There was blood on his chin. He looks worse than after the roughest session we ever had with the nets and the pikes.” Angel had finally had enough of the door and was snarling and protesting somewhere out of sight.</p>
<p>“Guess he knows Angelus was here last night. Angelus actin’ really hungry over someone new.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “He probably thinks that Angelus killed Holland Manners. Assuming he’s still able to get the scent today. Angelus must have… entertained himself lavishly after we went to bed, if Angel couldn’t bear to stay in the same clothes.”</p>
<p>They talked about their main cases over breakfast, but Wesley must have been doing some extra thinking in the background, because a few minutes after they’d sat down at their desks, he turned to Gunn and said, “I am going to stop the interns. I’ll tell Lilah today. I don’t particularly mind heating blood that he won’t drink. But if I think I know a way to stop him going through all this, then I am going to take it. It is getting worse. I don’t want to know what he’d do next.”</p>
<p>Manners had, of course, talked to Lilah Morgan about the night before, and Lilah did a lot of Wesley’s work for him by asking if he thought that Angel would ever really adjust to having new people in the apartment. They agreed that the interns would stop immediately. Lilah seemed touched by the idea of a meal to thank them all and suggested lunch the following Wednesday. Newton might not be able to make it; the signs were that he would be spending most of his time at the hospital for many weeks to come.</p>
<p>Angel did get dressed during Wednesday, but he also stayed angry, even after several long intervals of sleep and an afternoon as Angelus (possibly hallucinating). The first time he seemed calm was when he woke late on Thursday morning, and they decided to test him first with an approach and a few words from Wesley.</p>
<p>“You must be hungry, Angel. You haven’t had anything for at least two days.”</p>
<p>Angel looked at Wesley, wary, frowning, then slowly shook his head.</p>
<p>“Well, if I bring you half a measure, will you drink it?”</p>
<p>The same stare. Gunn decided after a few seconds that Angel wasn’t even going to nod, but Wesley had at least five times his patience with Angel. But then: “You tell me.” Gunn was so surprised he nearly let go the door-handle: Angel never spoke.</p>
<p>“I - “ Wesley took another step into the room, and Angel didn’t draw back. “Do you mean you’ll drink it if I tell you?”</p>
<p>Now Angel just nodded, very slightly.</p>
<p>“Good. Then I’ll go and get it right now.”</p>
<p>Angel drank slowly, frowning at the blood in the beaker in the same way that he’d been frowning at Wesley. Not one of his yearning days, but not back to normal either. The burns had faded, though; his body, at least, was predictable.</p>
<p>“It’s not what you want?”</p>
<p>Angel looked up, seemed startled by Wesley’s question. After a few seconds: “He wants.” Angelus, probably. And he couldn’t be saying Angelus wanted pig’s blood.</p>
<p>“I see. But he’s not here now. Will you be able to drink a full measure tomorrow?” Like Angel could promise anything. What was “tomorrow”, in his mind?</p>
<p>“Will you tell me?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>A strange shudder then Angel went back to drinking, but with his head turned now from Wesley. When he was finished he sat down against the wall and put the beaker on the floor without looking at it, and he didn’t look when Wesley bent to get the beaker.</p>
<p>There was blood on the clothes that Angel had shoved under the mattress, blood dried brown and stiff. The largest patches were at the neck of the shirt, but there were drops and smears all down the front, and on the trousers too. It must have been at least a minute before Angelus had even noticed that he’d bitten his tongue. Half the buttons were missing from the shirt, too, torn out so hard there were holes left in the cloth. Best to throw the clothes away; they’d never get the blood out properly, and Angel would probably know it and refuse to wear them. Better find all those buttons, too, not leave Angel anything to make him think of Angelus.</p>
<p>Angel seemed calm enough that they’d be able to shower him, so Wesley changed into his Speedos and his robe. Gunn waited in the doorway with the chains slung over one shoulder while Wesley went in to talk to Angel.</p>
<p>“Angel, it’s time you had a shower. You need to get properly clean.”</p>
<p>Again that shudder. Angel looked up at Wesley, suspicious and uncertain, then suddenly turned away, hunched to the wall. Had he finally got angry with Wesley for making him drink the pig’s blood?</p>
<p>“Come on, Angel. No one enjoys this but you know you’ll feel better once you’re clean.” Angel was slowly shaking his head. “Angel. We’ll make it as quick as we can. Come on. Start getting ready. Take that shirt off now.”</p>
<p>Angel did get to his feet, but then edged away along the wall. Gunn took a step forward, expecting Wesley to follow Angel, but Wesley hadn’t moved.</p>
<p>“You know I’m not going to force you., but I’m just asking you to undo a few buttons. Or do you still have those burns on your arms? Are they hurting you?”</p>
<p>Angel half-turned his head towards Wesley, then turned back and lifted his right arm. He stared at the palm, held up by his face, then down at the forearm, then across at the shoulder. Suddenly: “You’re trying to -” Angel had whirled around to face Wesley - fast and urgent, but still keeping his distance.</p>
<p>“I’m trying to get you clean. I’d like to do it before you fall asleep again. But I am prepared to wait until you realise that you need it. You should know I won’t force you.”</p>
<p>Angel looked as suspicious as ever, frowned and shook his head sharply; but then he started to undress and he was almost casual about it.</p>
<p>Gunn dealt with the button problem while Wesley and Angel were in the shower. No time to go searching (no point, either), good enough just to take the vacuum over the floor. Five or six times the vacuum met something large enough to give a rattling sound, and three of those had to be the missing buttons. The others were probably gravel that he and Wesley had tracked in on their shoes.</p>
<p>Angel was still casual, standing there quite patiently, watching while Wesley finished drying himself and then while Gunn helped Wesley back into the robe. Wesley didn’t even have to tell Angel to lie face-down on the mattress: he went straight over and knelt down. Not so casual, maybe, the way he turned his head to keep Wesley and the holy water in sight while Gunn was unlocking his wrists, but there was nothing to tell from his expression.</p>
<p>“Your clean clothes are right here. You do feel better now, don’t you?”</p>
<p>A slow nod then Angel opened his mouth and then something happened and they lost him. A frown, another of those shudders, and then he was kneeling up and sorting through his new set of clothes and most definitely ignoring them.</p>
<p>By the next Wednesday, when Wesley took Lilah and the three interns out to lunch, Angel’s appetite for pig’s blood had returned to normal, and Angelus had stopped disturbing their sleep. The five of them talked about the survey (around 80% complete, Wesley thought, from his current guess of how many more demons would be willing to talk to him), and they talked about the news, about travel, about museums and San Diego. Gunn was glad he’d decided not to go; outside work or training, he hadn’t met a single person yet who knew what to make of him and Wesley together. Angel had probably come closest, mostly by seeming not to care.</p>
<p>Now that the survey was winding down, Wesley got to start on his new demon languages, and Gunn got to catch up on some serious time-wasting with Matt, Grouw and Piriti. He’d tried to drop in to Caritas most Thursdays, even if he could only stay for half an hour, but it had been far too long since he’d been able to join in one of the nest-building sessions at the weekends. He hadn’t seen Anne in months either, since before they’d moved apartments.</p>
<p>The boys had told him at Caritas that they’d be working on the nest for most of Saturday. Gunn and Wesley went training early on Saturday morning, then Gunn met Anne for breakfast, and then he went over to the nest. Anne had heard from the crew that Gunn was doing fine, but she hadn’t heard about the move, and she wanted to know about Angel. The boys wanted to know about the survey, about the training with the duals, about the latest cases and missions. Gunn wouldn’t tell them anything about cases, but he did tell them about the pyramid scheme and the raid on the theatre - and then they wanted to know about the crew.</p>
<p>Around five Gunn and the boys started talking about their plans for the evening, not that there was a huge amount to say about going back to the beach-house to watch TV, play video games and order pizza. The plans sounded good to Gunn, but he’d told Wesley that he’d be back by six so he’d have to call first to check on Wesley’s plans.</p>
<p>Wesley hadn’t made any start on cooking and sounded quite glad to have even more of the day to himself. While he was talking to Wesley, Gunn saw Piriti’s brother Solito whispering something to Piriti. Piriti shushed Solito, looking annoyed, and then took a quick glance at Gunn. OK. Looked to Gunn like he’d just outed himself by checking in with Wesley like that.</p>
<p>To Grouw, since he didn’t want to put Solito on the spot: “So d’you guys have any bets placed on whether Wes and me were livin’ together? Or’s it too obvious for that?”</p>
<p>Grouw looked around at the others, then nodded. “Yeah, got pretty obvious.”</p>
<p>Matt said, “I’d’a won the bet if we’d had one. I told them, from the way you two argued.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed then turned serious. “How many people’s it obvious to? Wes’s always been worried it’d hurt our business.”</p>
<p>Matt, Piriti and Grouw shrugged. Solito was just staring at Gunn, eyes bulging so he looked more like a gecko than ever. Grouw said, “People talk like they assume, if they talk at all. Nothing to worry about. Not like it’s the weirdest thing about you, not even close.”</p>
<p>They set off for the beach-house soon after, and Gunn took the two Chachaspe demons in his truck. Solito had come out of the staring and eye-bulging and sat quietly while Gunn and Piriti talked. But about halfway there he said something to Piriti in their own language - it sounded like a question - and then they were into a serious argument. After a couple of miles Piriti seemed to give up; he gave a deep sigh, turned to Gunn and said, “He wants to ask you what it means about you and what you want about having a brood. You being with Wesley. Are you with him because you don’t want one? Or what will you do when you have to have one? Tell him it’s absolutely none of his business.” And then something extra to Solito, in the same tone but more so.</p>
<p>Gunn laughed, and kept his eyes on the road as he said, “No, it isn’t any of his business, but it doesn’t mean anything about me and whether or not I want a family. Never even thought about it.”</p>
<p>“Your elders… How did you tell them?” Finally, Solito himself.</p>
<p>“My - My parents have been gone for a long time. There’s no one left for me to tell.”</p>
<p>“Oh!” A long sigh of realisation - from both brothers, Gunn thought, and he checked their expressions and it did look like both. “Thank you, Mister Gunn. Please excuse me for asking such a thing.”</p>
<p>“No problem.” Gunn reckoned he’d got off lightly in the way of questions from a sheltered kid who didn’t understand the first thing about humans and sex.</p>
<p>Matt was in the mood for a jetski game and dug out his Nintendo64. He showed them round the courses explaining some of the tricks, and then they worked out a competition that meant they all raced each course in turn. They tried out all the different modes, mastered at least one stunt-move each, failed narrowly to break into the last level (which meant that Matt had still never seen the Glacier Coast course, and that was bugging them all now). Gunn left around eleven, with next Saturday as a firm date.</p>
<p>Wesley was stretched out on the couch with a book and a beer. He wanted a kiss, and then he wanted to hear about the beach-house. Gunn told him about the outing first, and Wesley was mildly concerned and then just amused.</p>
<p>“But we don’t argue.”</p>
<p>“Feels like that to you, English. You always win.”</p>
<p>“So we do? When?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged and smiled. “Last I can think is when you went in and unchained Angel on your own. ‘bout the only time I’ve been pissed at you. Matt’s full of crap, even if he did get it first.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded, returning Gunn’s smiled, then quirked his eyebrows and said, “Guess what Angel did today, when I went in to feed him?”</p>
<p>“Hmm. Asked for a green salad instead? Glass of wine?”</p>
<p>“Nearly as good. He thanked me.”</p>
<p>“That’s… Well, that’s good.” Gunn frowned, not sure if he should ask his question. “Was he… Where was he?” Really: was he lucid? Are we going to go through that again?</p>
<p>“Oh, he was in hell. He was scared of me but - I don’t think he said it to try to appease me. It was more as if…” Suddenly, as if he’d just worked it out: “Actually, it was as if he was trying to test me. But when I told him he was welcome he looked horrified and promptly ran away, so I got zero on that test.”</p>
<p>Gunn turned to look at the screen, then shook his head and sighed. “If there’s a Mad Vamp Olympics and they’ve got a Hiding Event… He’s got the gold, just on style.”</p>
<p>Wesley laughed, then also sighed. “He’s had a bad day since then. Some very disturbed dreams, violent hallucinations. For the last hour he’s been deep in hell and flinching at every sound.”</p>
<p>“Oh? Damn.” Gunn put his hand on Wesley’s stomach, fingers rubbing over the two lowest buttons. “What I been plannin’… Like it best when you get loud.”</p>
<p>“Some large percentage of fucked?”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded, then groaned long and low when Wesley reached up to take hold of the neck of his T-shirt and pull him down into a kiss. Signs were, they were both going to get loud.</p>
<p>Afterwards, when Wesley’s voice had recovered enough to put together a full sentence, he asked again about the beach-house. Gunn told him far too much about Wave-Race, starting it as a joke to see when Wes would make him stop, but Wesley’s limit must be set way past his own.</p>
<p>“You should come along next time. You steer, I’ll do the throttle, we’ll be doin’ backflips down the glacier.”</p>
<p>Wesley’s laugh was obviously a no, even before he said he had to stay in with Angel. “And I haven’t really changed my mind about them being too young and boisterous for me.”</p>
<p>“But you love hearin’ about it.”</p>
<p>“I love hearing about it from you.”</p>
<p>They got hot again for a while then eased back, and Gunn thought about himself happy out with his friends and Wesley happy alone with his book; and about fucking and how it got him hot to think that Wesley was the only man who’d ever done it to him, and how it also got him hot to think that he wasn’t the only man who’d done it to Wesley.</p>
<p>“Wes? Who was the first man who fucked you? Was it one of your language friends from college?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “That would have been the fourth or fifth. It was a boy at school.”</p>
<p>“Oh, right.” Yeah, Wes had said they were young. “Hey, was it your friend with the computer? You used to play those old games?”</p>
<p>“Ellison?” A thought that Wesley had never had before. “No, no, we wouldn’t - I mean, we were in Lower Fifth then. It was a boy in Lower Sixth.”</p>
<p>“So that’s a friend you made later? Was he into books ‘n’ research ‘n’ stuff?”</p>
<p>“More than most, I suppose. But we weren’t friends. I said he was in Lower Sixth. You wouldn’t make friends with someone even one year different.”</p>
<p>“But he was your first. You must’ve…”</p>
<p>“He wanted sex. He chose me.”</p>
<p>After about five seconds, Gunn said, “You’re saying it was rape. That is what you’re saying?”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “In that there was very little question of my saying no. But he wasn’t trying to hurt me, he just didn’t know how not to hurt me. That makes a difference. It got easier. And he was kind to me. More than once.”</p>
<p>“Wes. Wes.” He wasn’t going to ask how old Wesley had been. What was the point in making himself angrier? When Wesley just seemed to want him to see how this was different. “That shouldn’t’ve been your first. I thought… I thought it was you and a friend like me ‘n’ Luke - and you wanted each other so much you had to try it together. Together. Y’know.”</p>
<p>“I know. I’m glad it was like that for you. But I don’t want you to… He was kind to me. I knew there was much worse. Even at the time… There were many things I dreaded but that wasn’t one of them.”</p>
<p>So that was the main thing they had in common: their childhoods had taught them to get by on almost nothing. Give Gunn a group of friends and a direction to lead them, and he’d find his own roof and food and services and clothes. Show Wesley a trace of kindness and he’d forgive you almost anything. Gunn had never seen Angel being kind to Wesley, except maybe in how smoothly he’d adjusted when Gunn moved in. But there must have been some times in the early days, when Angel brought Wesley home from the hospital.</p>
<p>“Do you - D’you ever think about him? That boy? Does it ever get you hot?” When he’d started asking he’d been looking for a buzz, and now he felt kind of lost. Should be much worse than lost, should be facing a sleepless night of imagining, and of feeling guilty for imagining and for asking. But you’d think that Wesley hadn’t even noticed the question; Wesley acted like it was a simple fact, like who’d won at Wave-Race. So Gunn was left thinking about… the strange things that can happen when you go looking for a buzz.</p>
<p>“Not really about him but… I’ve been through hundreds of fantasies that use aspects of the situation and I’m begging you not to ask for details. I know they’re anything but healthy.” Wesley didn’t sound worried, more like resigned.</p>
<p>Gunn smiled, and slid his hand up around Wesley’s waist. “Hmm. Only if you buy me off by tellin’ me a healthy one. You got any?”</p>
<p>“Oh, just as many. Since I met you. But there’s not much to tell. There aren’t any… gimmicks. No costumes or - It’s just… the things I think about you that make me lose track of time, of where I am. The things I remember.”</p>
<p>Making Wesley lose track of time. Gunn liked that. “Yeah? So what’ll you remember about this? About tonight?”</p>
<p>“Probably… what I’m feeling right now. Very sore and rather sticky and hoping for more.”</p>
<p>Gunn groaned and pulled Wesley on top, held tight in a kiss - while his other hand was already testing that soreness. They were louder than before, maybe louder than ever before.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>On Tuesday morning Angel thanked Wesley again, and this time Gunn was there to see it. Yes, Angel was frightened, he was expecting something terrible to happen. He didn’t seem “horrified” when Wesley told him he was welcome - nothing as bad as that, but very confused and upset, anything but normal as a reaction to Wesley’s smile. Wesley thought the guards must sometimes have forced him to thank them and then punished him for not doing it properly, and he must have been remembering that recently for some reason. He certainly seemed to be having a lot of nightmares about his time in hell, and about one day in three he’d wake up acting like the demons who tortured him had only just left his cell. Another phase, like the yearning for human blood. Wouldn’t be the last, God no.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>“This was not a happy pig.” Angel to Wesley, in a mournful tone after two slow mouthfuls - and on a day when Angel had woken all hunched and closed-in, not likely even to look at them. Gunn did a double-take, saw the same from Wesley; and then Wesley laughed, and Angel tilted his head slightly, smiled, and took another mouthful.</p>
<p>“Well, when you consider the circumstances… You can’t be saying that they’re usually happy at that time?”</p>
<p>Angel shook his head. “This one had been worried about something for a long time. I think… about losing weight.” Nearly straight-faced, but not quite. There was something in those eyes. Angelus! Could it be Angelus? A new phase where he’d somehow got smart enough to pretend? Gunn moved up right next to Wesley, eyes fixed on Angel. Angel gave no sign of noticing Gunn. And was that natural, with Wesley laughing again, or was that Angelus?</p>
<p>“Or maybe about going bald? If it really tastes that bad I can get you another pack. Although I can’t guarantee that it will be from a carefree pig.”</p>
<p>Angel shook his head again, smiling openly now. “There’s nothing wrong with it. When you consider the circumstances.” And he lifted the beaker and took a very long drink.</p>
<p>“So how long have you been planning that joke?”</p>
<p>“Since… I think since the last time.” The last time for what?</p>
<p>“Well, I appreciate the effort. Thank you.”</p>
<p>Angel drained the beaker and handed it back. “You’re welcome.” Then his expression suddenly turned serious. He looked hard at Wesley for three or four seconds and then dropped his head so he was staring at the ground.</p>
<p>Quietly: “Angel? What’s my name? Do you know my name?”</p>
<p>A shake of the head, but so hard and so quick Gunn thought it could be “go away” just as soon as “no”.</p>
<p>“My name is Wesley. You can call me Wesley.”</p>
<p>Angel raised his head, but to look at Gunn, not Wesley, and not meeting Gunn’s eyes. But then Angel gave a split-second glance across at Wesley, a more-direct look at Gunn; and then he closed his eyes, nodded twice, and turned away.</p>
<p>Gunn slid the bolts, then: “What the fuck?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded then shrugged. “I am not going to make any guesses. Raise any hopes.”</p>
<p>“So… not going to guess it was Angelus?”</p>
<p>Wesley looked stunned, then kind of sick. “We’d be dead or wishing we were. He wouldn’t waste his chance like that. And… the way he admitted he’d been joking. I know how Angelus smiles, it’s never like that.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Was just a first guess. But he was after something, ‘n’ that’s more Angelus than it is Angel. Worth bein’ careful. ‘s all I’m sayin’.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “We shouldn’t go in without holy water. Until we’re sure.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>“This was not a happy pig.” Thursday evening, and Gunn had been waiting for Angel to wake up before he could leave for Caritas. Angel’s delivery was exactly the same as on Tuesday morning, though he hadn’t been nearly as closed-in beforehand.</p>
<p>“No?” Wesley sounded concerned and alert, like he was thinking hard what might have gone wrong. “Was it one of those pigs that worry too much about losing weight?”</p>
<p>Angel seemed frozen with astonishment - and, yes, Gunn did believe now that it was Angel; Angelus would have felt a surge of rage when Wesley had spoiled his joke and his plan, and he wouldn’t have been able to hide it. Eventually: “Yes. But I - You know.”</p>
<p>Wesley smiled. “It was a lucky guess. But I think I do know your sense of humour. There isn’t really anything wrong with the blood, is there?”</p>
<p>Angel shook his head, then concentrated hard on drinking.</p>
<p>“Thank you.” Wesley took the empty beaker. Angel nodded, very serious. “I’m sorry I stepped on your joke. You would have told it much better than I did. I promise you I won’t do that again.”</p>
<p>Angel looked like he’d never heard an apology before, was gonna need the rest of the day to work out what it meant. Some long moments of frowning, then he slowly raised his hand toward the beaker, frowning even more deeply. Taking it back so they could start again? Gunn wouldn’t be surprised if Angel was confused enough about time that he thought he could rewind it. But Angel stopped a few inches short of the breaker, then let his hand drop back. “You… You shouldn’t be…”</p>
<p>“We shouldn’t still be here now that you’ve fed? I know. We’ll leave you alone until tomorrow.” And maybe that had been what Angel had meant, because as soon as they left he went to lie curled up on the mattress, went straight there like he’d been thinking of nothing else all the time they were with him.</p>
<p>The boys had started to wonder if Gunn was going to show at Caritas that evening, and they were very glad to see him because they wanted to tell him about this idea they’d just got for the summer: running tours of L.A. for demons, using the tour that Wesley had designed for them as their starting-point - if that would be OK with Wesley. They also wanted to use Wesley’s survey to help reach their market, and they didn’t know anyone who’d do better than Wesley when they were ready to put together new tours. Of course they’d pay, whatever Wesley and Gunn thought was reasonable.</p>
<p>Gunn didn’t think they had a chance of earning enough to be able to afford Wesley, not with nearly half the summer already gone, but he said he’d ask Wesley. Of course they’d give as much help as they could, even if it was Gunn doing the research instead of Wesley. And it might end up as a good way of advertising Wyndham Gunn.</p>
<p>Wesley was lying on the couch again. Angel was still on the mattress, but asleep now. Wesley agreed that they’d help the boys: work something out with the survey, set them a special rate, probably give them a few hours a week for nothing, depending on how much work the boys themselves seemed to be putting in. But Wesley wasn’t showing as much interest in the boys as usual. He was preoccupied.</p>
<p>“ ‘s up? Somethin’s buggin’ you.” And Gunn had his answer just from the way Wesley turned his head to look up at the screen. “You handled that fine, Wes. All we knew, it coulda been Angelus. Next joke, ‘s all his.”</p>
<p>“What? No, that was…” Wesley swallowed. “We’ve moved on since then. We talked for a few minutes.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, when? What about?”</p>
<p>A shrug and a grimace. “I’m not really sure. About half an hour after you left he knelt up and was looking at the door. I thought I’d better go in, in case he needed… I don’t know. He was truly frightened when I first opened the door. Almost panicked. And then I asked him if he needed anything and he looked so relieved. He came closer and after a while he asked me…” Another shrug. “What I needed. What I was like with the others. Whether they let me meet him. Meet Angelus, he must have meant. I tried to answer properly but whenever I asked him what he meant he seemed to take that as the answer itself and then he’d say something that I couldn’t understand even well enough to….” A sigh. “I told him my name again. And then I think he ran out of questions. I asked him again if he needed anything. He shook his head and then he turned and went back to the mattress. And he’s been like that ever since. But he seemed… He acted as if it was his idea of a normal conversation. With a natural end. When he went back to the mattress it wasn’t because something had suddenly made him want to run away.”</p>
<p>“He’s decided he likes you.” A joke, to avoid the idea that Angel might be clawing back some lucidity. How long had it been since the last vision? Three weeks at least, Gunn thought. The longest gap since Gunn had known him. Long enough for his mind to start to heal? Maybe that would be good news, maybe Angel would even recover enough to be able to join them on missions again. Seemed more likely, though, that it would be bad, very bad: that he’d just heal enough to be able to break again. And there was nothing to say he’d break in the same neat patterns, with Angelus kept at a safe distance by sleep.</p>
<p>Wesley laughed. “Well, he did only say that there was nothing his guards could have done to make him trust them. It’s all-too-possible to like someone you don’t trust.”</p>
<p>“God, yeah. So that’s why he’s been runnin’ away. He remembers all the times you stood him up. Stuck him with the check. Just ‘forgot’ to invite him to the party.”</p>
<p>“Of course. I suppose I did take advantage. I knew he couldn’t resist my rakish charm.”</p>
<p>They both laughed then, but by the next time he went to Caritas, Gunn had decided that Wesley had, in fact, achieved both miracles: he’d made Angel like him, and he’d made Angel trust him. Some days were bad days and Angel didn’t know Wesley at all, but on his good days you could see him coming back again and again to the question of what Wesley really meant, and returning with fewer doubts each time.</p>
<p>Gunn had also decided that Angel wasn’t becoming lucid, not really. You couldn’t call him lucid when his mind was still broken apart in the same way, even if he was taking to Wesley again. Angel still thought he was in hell, he didn’t know he had visions, and he didn’t know his brain had been damaged, that he could hardly trust anything it told him.</p>
<p>Over the weekend Angel had asked Wesley over and over why he was so different from the other guards (“Didn’t they tell you about him? You don’t know what I’ve done?”). Wesley had tried to tell him the truth, thinking he might be close enough to lucid, that it might be what was needed to bring him back, but instead it showed how far Angel had gone in accepting his place in hell. He thought Wesley was answering his question with a lie, an obvious, glaring lie, and that this was also Wesley’s answer: that he wasn’t different from the other guards, not at all. Angel had vamped up and thrown Wesley towards the window - towards the view that had never bothered him before, that he’d recognised from the start as a meaningless illusion - and Gunn had blasted him with holy water and dragged Wesley out.</p>
<p>Angel had howled his fury and betrayal for hours then had a series of terrible nightmares about the other guards and probably about Wesley too. When he woke he was wary of Wesley though he didn’t seem to know why, and the next day he’d forgotten everything and was asking the question again like it was the first time (“I don’t know, Angel. I don’t know anything about the other guards.”). Wesley’s shoulder was still stiff from being slammed against the barrier on the window, and the huge bruises there were still solid purple.</p>
<p>All of Angel’s nightmares over the last few weeks must have been anxiety dreams about trusting Wesley. Made total sense to Gunn now. Of course Angel saw that Wesley was different: it was in everything Wesley said, how he said it, how he listened. And of course Angel would think this had to be a lie, another round in his torture. So he was still fighting, but Wesley was going to win. When the door opened and he saw it was Wesley, you could see the relief and the welcome, even on the screen.</p>
<p>How sick was it to be comfortable, more than comfortable, with the idea that Angel would never get out of his hell, that he would never be in a state to take in the truth? Gunn knew he would never like Angel, but he didn’t hate him now. He used to think there was nothing Angel could do to make up for that terrible time he’d hurt Wesley. Not properly, not to make the words go away like they’d never been spoken, never even been thought. Wesley deserved so much better from Angel and maybe Angel didn’t even know that, and Gunn had thought he could never forgive him. But now… Wesley did deserve for Angel to learn to trust him in hell. He did deserve to be the centre of all the good thoughts that this Angel had. He deserved to know it and this Angel told him every time they met: not in words, but in that look of welcome.</p>
<p>Wesley, being Wesley, wouldn’t accept any credit for himself - he talked of the change as an accident, pure chance - and Gunn didn’t argue, just teased him about his “rakish charm”. Wesley was so happy, though, he could hardly stop talking about how good it was to see the difference in Angel now that he had days in his hell when he knew he was safe. And Gunn would never argue with that, because it was good to see.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>About a quarter of Wyndham Gunn’s current cases had come to them through contacts they’d made in doing the survey, and they expected the proportion to get larger. Some were from the businesses that had supported the survey, some were from demons who’d filled in the forms, and the latest was from a newspaper that had contacted them to ask for information from the survey and then had hired Wesley to assess their archives. They got the work from the newspaper even after Wesley had told the journalist that he couldn’t tell her anything about the survey results until the security precautions had been agreed, which wouldn’t be for at least another month.</p>
<p>The security precautions were to ensure that survey results would only be released for purposes that would benefit the demons who had contributed: it must never be used to track down enemies or prey (except for visions, of course, like the one with the Haklar demon). There would be rules, an application procedure, background checks, and a properly-representative review board. Wesley had asked the committee of businesses that had supported the survey to design the security precautions while he was working on the survey itself, but they didn’t really get very far. Yes, they accepted Wesley’s argument that the survey database should be public property (the community as a whole had made it possible, therefore the community as a whole should own it), but they’d really much rather keep it to themselves, for the business advantage. They had held meetings, and they’d produced a design for the security precautions that they seemed to think was good enough. Gunn and Wesley spent two evenings sketching out and typing up a better design, and then another two evenings working out how to present their design so it looked like a tribute to the committee’s design rather than a demolition. The tact had worked and now they were making real progress, but they’d be lucky to get the system in place by fall.</p>
<p>Of course Gunn and Wesley weren’t making the boys wait until fall, the boys were another exception (and this time one that the committee didn’t need to know about). The committee members were probably making their own exceptions all the time, using their own copies of the database: doing favours for friends or just plain selling the information. So their security precautions were already shot full of holes but it was still worth doing. The day would come when they were gonna need those rules, they were both sure of it.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Angel was ignoring Gunn. He’d never paid Gunn much attention since Gunn wasn’t the one who carried the blood, but when he’d been scared of both of them he’d at least bothered to track Gunn’s movements. Didn’t need to, anymore; he knew he was safe from anything as long as Wesley was there. He didn’t even look at Gunn when Gunn was about to chain him for his shower. He looked at Wesley instead and said, “You don’t have to chain me. I know I can’t escape.”</p>
<p>“No. You wouldn’t get very far. But we do have to chain you, Angel. You get angry sometimes, without warning. You change. We have to take precautions.”</p>
<p>“I thought… I thought he couldn’t get out without… You wouldn’t call him.”</p>
<p>“It’s not just him. As I said, you get angry sometimes. I know you don’t remember.”</p>
<p>“I… I remember being angry. I remember what -” He shook his head. “Have I been angry with you? What did I do? Did I -”</p>
<p>“You taught me to be careful. That’s all. You need the chains, Angel.” And Angel nodded and raised his hands behind his back.</p>
<p>How did Angel know he couldn’t escape? How many times had he tried and failed? And how angry had he got with the guards? He’d attacked them, sounded like. Probably done some damage. Yeah, they probably made sure he remembered that.</p>
<p>Angel had gradually stopped asking Wesley why he was different from the other guards. He didn’t seem able to learn Wesley’s name, but the same number of repetitions had drummed into him the idea that Wesley didn’t know the other guards. And Angel had added his own ideas, which emerged fragment by fragment: not so much at feeding times, when Gunn was usually there, but when Wesley needed a break from work and would go in and keep him company for ten minutes.</p>
<p>“He thinks we don’t know that we’re working in a hell dimension. He thinks that the demons in charge have somehow hidden everything unpleasant from us.”</p>
<p>“Boy! How stupid does that make us?”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged and nodded. “He doesn’t see it like that. He doesn’t need us to justify being here. He doesn’t want us to change anything in how he’s being treated. How he was being treated. He just keeps telling me to ‘be careful’. That they must have plans. That they’re using us. And he’s…” A brief, fond laugh. “You should hear him struggle to warn us that we’re in the wrong place. While avoiding telling me anything about what kind of place it really is. I shouldn’t laugh, he’s… Of course he has his pride. But he’s so transparent when he’s being evasive.”</p>
<p>The warnings didn’t come every day - they probably depended on what Angel had been dreaming about - and Gunn had to wait several days before he could hear one again, and this time listen properly.</p>
<p>“Isn’t pride. The reason he won’t say. He’s worried you’ll run to the boss and get fired. Or worse. Wants to keep you here. ‘n’ keep you safe.”</p>
<p>“Oh. Of course. He’s taking a risk, then, in warning us at all.” A sudden smile. “Unless he’s relying on us being stupid.”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Thinks he could lose you if he doesn’t warn you. ‘s a tough one. He does OK, you ask me.”</p>
<p>“I’ll tell him, then, that we will be careful. And we won’t do anything to let them know that he’s warned us. If he stops warning us, that will presumably mean that we’ve stopped him worrying about it.”</p>
<p>Angel looked so relieved when Wesley gave him the reassurance, more relieved even than he’d looked when he’d first started trusting Wesley; Gunn thought for a moment that Angel was going to hug Wesley. The warnings stopped very quickly: within a week.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley cut his hand badly during a session with the duals one Tuesday: a deep, ragged gash right across the palm and up the side of his index finger. The Ehiba half of Tarrag had wrenched his sword away and raked him with a claw in the same motion. It had been an accident: Tarrag had every reason to expect Wesley to react more quickly. Gunn took Wesley to the emergency room and kept him company while he had a shockingly-painful painkilling injection and twelve stitches.</p>
<p>Gunn thought he knew why the accident had happened: Wesley had been distracted because something had reminded him of the sex they’d been having recently during their own training sessions. He’d told Wesley it could be dangerous (OK, no, he hadn’t - but he’d thought it, afterwards, he was going to tell him). They’d had it under control before, never even talked about it, somehow blocked out the sight and smell and feel of one another, managed to concentrate on the body as an instrument, all science and numbers and repetitions. Second-nature to Wesley, Gunn had thought. Wesley taking everything so seriously, no room to admit you were having fun, and Wesley’s brain did love to concentrate. But recently Wesley’s body just had too much energy - or that was how it felt to Gunn. And it felt good, so… Gunn had been letting himself wait until he saw the right time for saying they should stop, instead of just saying it as soon as he thought it.</p>
<p>Still, this really wasn’t the right time, with Wesley miserable and annoyed with himself and hardly able to do anything what with the stitches and the dressing; he couldn’t hold a pen, he could barely make a cup of tea. Gunn took them to Blockbuster on the way home and rented some low-key movies (just enough action, just enough laughs), and they lay together on the couch. Wesley kept on thinking of things that he wouldn’t be able to do for a week. Wash his face. Drive the car. Carry a pint of blood. Gunn made soothing noises (properly soothing, from Wesley’s reaction), and kept his hold tight on Wesley’s waist.</p>
<p>The local anaesthetic had worn off by the end of the movie and Wesley got really annoyed with himself when he was getting ready for bed. “Believe it or not, it doesn’t hurt that much. I know I look as if I’m - It’s because it’s my hand and there are different ways of trying to do things. I keep on trying to find the way that hurts least. It would be easier if I didn’t have a choice.”</p>
<p>“I get that. Hand’s gotta be the worst that way.”</p>
<p>Wesley was in a much better mood by morning and had decided that he could carry a half-pint of blood (and another, as soon as Angel asked for it). He didn’t carry any during the morning because Angel was asleep, and instead he worked out how to use the tape recorder to make notes on translations and research, since using a pen hurt too much.</p>
<p>Angel noticed Wesley’s bandaged hand immediately, and was disturbed by it, and unable to take his eyes off the hand. “You’re hurt.”</p>
<p>“Not badly. But I’d be grateful if you’d take this beaker now. I am starting to feel the weight.”</p>
<p>Angel took the beaker, drained it in a single motion, then threw it aside, stepped forward, and lifted Wesley’s hand in both his own. Gunn picked up the beaker, set it outside the door, then went back to stand guard.</p>
<p>“What did they do?”</p>
<p>“They didn’t do anything. I was fighting - I was learning to fight - and I made a mistake.”</p>
<p>“Why - Why did you have to fight?”</p>
<p>“I learn to fight so that I can help people. This was an accident last night, during a lesson.”</p>
<p>Angel had been exploring Wesley’s palm with his fingertips, but now he was tugging at the edges of the dressing. “Show me.”</p>
<p>“That hurts, Angel. Wait.” Wesley pulled his hand away then turned to Gunn, face asking a question, which Gunn guessed was: “Should I show him?” Gunn shrugged, Wesley frowned for a few seconds, then glanced at Angel, shrugged back at Gunn, and held his hand out for Gunn to remove the dressing. The dressing was fresh on that morning and there was no blood - or no spot bigger than a pinhead.</p>
<p>Angel traced the line of the wound, first to one side, then right along the stitches. His touch must be more careful than it looked, because Wesley didn’t make a sound.</p>
<p>“It’s hot.”</p>
<p>“Yes. It’s healing.”</p>
<p>“What… What were you fighting with?”</p>
<p>“I had a sword. But I caught my hand on a barb. Like a hook.”</p>
<p>“A sword? I -” Angel let go of Wesley’s hand and stepped back, then looked hard at Wesley, up and down. Then - surprising - he turned and looked Gunn up and down too. He looked thoughtful, like he was trying to work something out. A slight, quick shake of the head, and he turned back to Wesley, stepped forward, even closer than before, and fastened his hands about Wesley’s shoulder and upper arm, fingers dug in, half-kneading, half-clawing.</p>
<p>“Hey!” and “Ow!” - ignored by Angel.</p>
<p>Gunn moved in and Wesley must have heard the water sloshing. Quickly but quietly, eyes on Angel’s face: “No, let him. He’s not being… I want to know.”</p>
<p>A few more seconds and the fingers relaxed, and then stroked over the same areas, maybe in apology. “It isn’t natural.”</p>
<p>“Now, really. I’ve been fencing for most of my life. I was considered quite promising.”</p>
<p>Slowly, hands still moving: “This isn’t fencing. You’re fighting to kill.”</p>
<p>“We - have to be able to. Yes.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded and took his hands away, but stayed at Wesley’s right side, couldn’t be an inch between them.</p>
<p>“Would you kill me? Would you kill him?”</p>
<p>“No. Because you’re not going to harm anyone. Either of you. You can’t, now.”</p>
<p>Should have been reassuring but Angel backed away, shaking his head hard. “You don’t know. They didn’t… He does. He still does.”</p>
<p>“No, Angel, That stopped a long time ago. Before you came here. I know you think it’s still happening. But that’s just a trick.”</p>
<p>“I - I felt him.” Angel swallowed. “I tasted…”</p>
<p>“It was a dream. You have strong dreams here. You remember some things too clearly.”</p>
<p>“A dream.” Angel closed his eyes for a few seconds, then, with a tilt of the head: “Do I dream about you?”</p>
<p>“I think you used to. But not recently.”</p>
<p>“I don’t remember.”</p>
<p>“I know.” A pause. “Would you like me to bring you the rest of your blood? That was only half a measure.” Angel shook his head then wandered away to sit in his corner. “Well, if you get hungry later, just call. I’ll be listening.” But Angel wasn’t. Not ignoring, exactly. Gone somewhere else.</p>
<p>Gunn locked the door then turned to Wesley, arms folded. “Wes. Gotta say this. This was really a prison, I’d be askin’ for reassignment. Reportin’ your clueless ass. You so do not get this job.”</p>
<p>“He was just… He needed to do it. There was no harm.”</p>
<p>“You don’t let the prisoners check out your muscles! Don’t care what they think they need. You got limits. And that’s what he needs more. Look!” At the screen, with Angel now curled in on himself. “How’s that helped him?”</p>
<p>“I suspect he has other things on his mind than my muscles. And this isn’t a prison. Or only for Angelus. For Angel it’s… I think it’s a hospital. Treatment… doesn’t have to be rigid.”</p>
<p>“You sayin’ it’s a cure? What book you read that in?”</p>
<p>“Not…” Wesley sighed. “I mean ‘the way we treat him’. Charles, please let me… Let’s wait for him to prove who’s right.”</p>
<p>“Don’t wanna see the proof I think we got comin’. Hospital… Prison… You better know you’re both of you on probation.”</p>
<p>Gunn was out working for most of the afternoon and evening, while Wesley stayed home and did bookwork. When Gunn came home Wesley was still at his desk.</p>
<p>“You’ve eaten, right.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “I heated something.”</p>
<p>“What about him? Did he call?”</p>
<p>“No. He left that to Angelus. I should have insisted on giving him both half-pints at once. He’s never liked asking.”</p>
<p>“You mind if I watch TV?”</p>
<p>“Go ahead. I’ll go and read in the bedroom.”</p>
<p>“Jeez, don’t be like that!”</p>
<p>“I’m not being like anything. You want to watch television, I don’t. I’d be able to concentrate while it was on if I was able to make written notes, but I can’t write. So if I want to concentrate I have to move to another room. I’m not sulking, you’re not driving me out.”</p>
<p>“Hmm. But that’s the same as what you’d say if you were sulking.”</p>
<p>Wesley stood up and tucked the book under his arm. “Yes, but if I was sulking I wouldn’t be asking you to make me a tea during the first commercial break.”</p>
<p>Gunn had to laugh. “OK. You go.”</p>
<p>Wesley had taken Gunn’s side of the bed, to have the nightstand next to his arm. Before Gunn had moved in, that used to be Wesley’s own side of the bed. “Thank you, Charles.” Wesley touched his hand, just for a second. “What are you watching?”</p>
<p>“Rerun of ‘Cordy’. Just caught the last half. News next. Or I’ll just surf. Yeah, know that drives you crazy. You’re Mister Concentration.”</p>
<p>“I was born in the wrong century. Charles. I’m sorry about earlier. Of course you think I should be more careful. But remember it was just him and me for nearly a year. I’ve dealt with him in a hundred different moods and in some ways he’s hardly changed at all. I think… I take fewer risks than you give me credit for.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded and sat down on the bed, and put his hand on Wesley’s thigh, just above the knee. “I guess. Was hard to imagine by the time I met you. But I still think you’re… Thing is, he really thinks he’s in prison. ‘n’ we know he doesn’t like it when you try to mess with that. You treat him too much like he’s in a hospital and… What if he stops trusting you? Slowly, so we don’t realise?”</p>
<p>“Alright, I’ll…” A sigh and a thoughtful frown. “I’ll try to behave in the way he’d expect me to. If he seems disturbed by today, then I’ll… I’ll make a point of stopping him the next time he does something like that.” Wesley relaxed suddenly and tilted his hips to move his leg against Gunn’s hand. “I wish I could touch you. I’d try to keep you from going back to the news.”</p>
<p>“You can touch me.”</p>
<p>“It hurts too much. Everything I want to do would hurt too much.”</p>
<p>“Hurtin’ right now?” Wesley nodded. “You tried taking anything? Tylenol or anything?” No. “I’ll go and get some. And turn off the news.”</p>
<p>Wesley swallowed two tablets with tea while Gunn put his hand back on Wesley’s thigh, but further up. Wesley smiled and shifted his hips again, but then shook his head. “It’ll still hurt too much.”</p>
<p>“I know. I was planning on doing all the work.”</p>
<p>A sweet end to an argument. They were so good together. Falling for the strange, reserved man, so quickly, after just one lunch and two beers - something in Gunn had known what he should have been looking for. No point, though, in looking earlier. Wesley had been on the other side of the world.</p>
<p>The next day Wesley went in with the dressing already off: less for Angel to ask about, less reason for him to come close. Angel had forgotten that Wesley was injured, but he remembered that Wesley fought, and with a sword. He was very serious. Not puzzled, though, not showing any sign of questioning because of the day before.</p>
<p>While Wesley was in the kitchen heating the second half-pint, Angel said to Gunn, “You were apart. When he fought.”</p>
<p>“Kinda. ‘bout halfway across the room.”</p>
<p>A nod. “You fight too.”</p>
<p>“Yeah.”</p>
<p>“With a sword?”</p>
<p>“Sometimes. I like an axe or a stake.”</p>
<p>“Is it halved when you’re together? Or is it the same? Can you make it heal?”</p>
<p>“Wesley’s hand? It is healing. Itches a lot. Aches if he does the wrong thing.”</p>
<p>“He’ll fight again?”</p>
<p>“Oh, yeah. Soon. Soon ‘s he can, I bet.”</p>
<p>“Do you fight without him?”</p>
<p>“No. Sure, I would if I had to. But, no, we train as a team.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded, then turned his attention from Gunn to the doorway. Gunn wondered if Angel could tell anything from the sounds. Had he worked out his own ideas about where the blood came from, what the hum and beep of the microwave meant?</p>
<p>When Wesley held out his hand to take the empty beaker, Angel took hold of the hand by the fingers and lifted and turned it so he could examine the wound. “It is healing. The blood is inside.”</p>
<p>“Yes. I should be able to bring you a full pint tomorrow. The stitches have nearly stopped pulling.”</p>
<p>The next day, Friday, Wesley was able to carry a full pint comfortably, but Angel was having one of those days when he was terrified of them. He wouldn’t come near Wesley, so Wesley had to kneel down and put the beaker on the floor, which was awkward for him and put stresses on the wound that he’d normally avoid. When Wesley ordered him, Angel did come forward to take the blood; he drank on his knees, eyes closed, and when he’d finished he put the beaker down behind his back and then edged away along the wall.</p>
<p>You could argue that he was in this state because he was confused by Wesley not setting the right limits, but Gunn wasn’t gonna do that. OK he wasn’t an expert like Wesley, but he could see that this Angel came from a different part of Angel’s brain, from a part that couldn’t have any thought about Wesley except that he was a guard.</p>
<p>Over the weekend Angel knew that Wesley had stitches in his hand, but he didn’t know that he’d seen them before. “I thought I might not see you. That they might not…” A glance at Gunn, dismissive, then back to the hand, especially to the stitches. “And you should be. Did they make you work? What did they do?”</p>
<p>“They didn’t make me do anything. This isn’t nearly enough to stop me working.” A smile. “And no one would ever have to make me look after you.”</p>
<p>Angel looked self-conscious, didn’t quite manage to smile back. He looked down at Wesley’s hand in his own, then lowered the hand and let go. When he raised his head again, it was to look at Gunn. “Are you in a religion? Have you been given a duty?” He was speaking to Wesley, though: it was in the tone of his voice.</p>
<p>“No. Not ‘given’. But it’s important to us… to make things better where we can.”</p>
<p>Angel turned back to Wesley, looked hard at him, then nodded. “Yes. I - I wanted… But I just hid. I even tried to go back. I wasn’t good enough. I’m not. I couldn’t do it alone. But you’re different.” And his hand on Wesley again, this time on Wesley’s chest.</p>
<p>Gunn bent to pick up the empty beaker from the floor by Angel’s foot. “Wes, I want to get going. They’re expecting me with the books.” Gunn was spending the day at the beach-house with the boys, helping with research, ideas for marketing and (probably) the assault on Glacier Coast.</p>
<p>Until that morning, Gunn had been planning on telling the boys about Wesley’s hand, probably tell them a few stories, like Wesley being annoyed about having too many choices. But now it felt like all stories led to Angel - to Angel’s hand. And what could he ever tell them about that?</p>
<p>There wasn’t a vampire sense of touch. Was there? Yes, Angel noticed heat, blood heat, but he would notice those, being cold as death. When he touched Wesley he would have felt warm cotton, the solid curves of muscle over ribs, but nothing distinct, nothing really personal. Nothing he could claim later as a way of recognising Wesley.</p>
<p>Stupid. Stupid to be jealous. And of course he wasn’t jealous, just thrown. In the time he’d known Angel, Angel had freaked him out at least once a week - some weeks, at least once a day. You’d think the vamp would run out of surprises, but no.</p>
<p>The boys already knew about Wesley’s hand, as it turned out, because Grouw had spoken to his sister the night before. They’d been out and got a Get Well card for Wesley, and a dragon finger-puppet. The finger-puppet wasn’t a gag gift - they were very pleased with themselves for finding something they were sure Wesley would have chosen for himself.</p>
<p>Wesley just wasn’t capable of playing silly games with a finger-puppet - he did not do cute - but he was pleased almost speechless to be given a silly gift; that the boys had thought of him, and that they could see him like that. He put it on the tallest pencil in the pen-jar on his desk and kept sneaking looks at it and smiling to himself.</p>
<p>Wesley still couldn’t touch Gunn with anything more than fingertips and lips, but tonight he refused to let Gunn do all the work. Gunn couldn’t believe how exciting it was, how satisfying - like “slow and serious” (which they hadn’t done in months), but electric with the sense of something held back, just out of reach. When Gunn tried to touch Wesley in the same way, he found he couldn’t hold himself back from using his whole hand; he’d start properly with just fingertips and then Wesley would give a moan or a sigh, and Gunn would be clutching and pushing. After the third time (or was it the fourth?), Wesley told him to use only his mouth; later he’d be allowed to use his hands, but only on himself, and only to touch himself the way Wesley told him. At the end, though, Gunn forgot everything and grabbed for Wesley’s hand, squeezed it so hard he made the ring move by nearly a quarter-turn.</p>
<p>“Wes. Wes. If I don’t say this now I think I’ll never be able to say it. You’d only have to… Sex when we’re training… We gotta stop it. Maybe it isn’t why you got your hand cut, but - No way it helps us focus.”</p>
<p>Wesley was nodding, no sign of surprise. “We’ll stop. I know. It was -” A long sigh. “If you could try… to look like everyone else when you move. When you pick up a sword.”</p>
<p>Much later, when Gunn was on the point of falling asleep, Wesley said, thoughtful, “I think I might give him some books again. A magazine, at least.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Wes. Not another bar scene over and over. And then he’ll tear it up after a week. God, Wes, what’s the point?”</p>
<p>“I’m not… I won’t give him anything with a story. Books about art, I thought. About drawing. Even an auction catalogue would be better than nothing. He must be so bored, I hate to think how bored.”</p>
<p>A long pause, then Gunn said, “He starts callin’ you in to read with him… He shows any sign he can’t handle it, gets angry just once…”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “It’s an experiment. That’s all.”</p>
<p>Gunn drove Wesley to Barnes and Noble on Sunday morning, and Wesley bought some paperback books on architecture, landscape painting and still-life painting; he didn’t think it would ever be a good idea to give Angel pictures of people. Angel was still asleep when Gunn went to play pickup with the crew and the kids from the shelter. Gunn asked Wesley not to take the books in on his own, but he expected that Wesley would find some excuse while Gunn was gone, given that it was books (“He heard me turn the pages. He asked for them.”).</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t give Angel the books, because Angel woke up with a fake vision of Angelus about half an hour after Gunn left, and he was still lost in the vision when Gunn came back. The vision was full of sex, and Angel got an erection even while he was frantic for Angelus to be stopped. His body seemed to deal with the erection all on its own, the hands acting as if by reflex while Angel’s mind felt and added nothing: no sign of guilt, or really of pleasure.</p>
<p>A long vision, over three hours, and then a long sleep, until past nine at night - and then there was guilt. Wesley offered Angel a shower immediately, before the blood, and Angel got ready in record time. Wesley was fully dressed and Gunn was the one in the robe, but Angel clearly didn’t realise that this shower was going to be different, not until the moment when Gunn stepped into the bath with him. Gunn saw shock and bewilderment, and then Angel turned towards Wesley, as fast as the chains would let him.</p>
<p>Wesley raised his hand to show Angel the palm. “I can’t make any kind of rubbing motion, Angel. The stitches make it too painful. Charles will get you clean just as well as I do. In fact he’ll do it better, because he has two hands.”</p>
<p>Angel shook his head several times, but then he slowly turned back towards Gunn. His eyes were closed and he was slumped, and he stayed like that throughout the shower, and wouldn’t look at either of them as they were getting him back to his room.</p>
<p>Getting dressed seemed to help Angel, steady him, since he was able to meet Wesley’s eyes - just for a second - when he took the beaker of blood from Wesley’s hand.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry.” Angel’s voice was very quiet, just above a whisper.</p>
<p>“Well… I know you don’t like change. Charles knows that too, he knows not to take it too personally. And it was worth it to get clean, wasn’t it?”</p>
<p>“I’ve tried. I’ve… I don’t know how to stop him.” The guilt again, and shame. “They let him out and I find… I find what he’s done. I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>“Ah. You were thinking about Angelus. What you found when you woke up. Angel, I’m not shocked by knowing that a person has sexual fantasies. It’s natural. Even for him. A fantasy can’t harm anyone else. There’s no need to feel guilt. Or to apologise.”</p>
<p>“But - If you knew what he thinks. The things…”</p>
<p>“I do know. And I’m still not shocked. We all have some unhealthy thoughts, some reactions we’d rather not describe to someone else. But I don’t judge people on what they think, not even him. He’s a monster because of what he’s done. And it doesn’t matter how many more unhealthy fantasies he has, because he’ll never be able to act on them again, not now we have him in here. Don’t worry about that, Angel. Drink your blood now.”</p>
<p>Angel drank, then returned the beaker. “Thank you.”</p>
<p>“You’re welcome.”</p>
<p>Wesley washed the beaker then decided to go in again with the books. Gunn thought it would have been better to give Angel the books first thing in the morning, keep watch on him during the day. But then again if Angel was going to react badly, they’d find out one way or another.</p>
<p>Angel was puzzled by the books. “What are they for? What do you want me to do?”</p>
<p>“I’m hoping you’ll get some enjoyment out of them. That is, I’m hoping I chose some subjects that you’ll enjoy. I know you draw. I thought you might find these interesting.”</p>
<p>A long pause. Angel slowly shuffled the books two, three times round without opening any of them. “I’ll try.”</p>
<p>“That’s the spirit. Goodnight, Angel. We’ll see you tomorrow.”</p>
<p>Wesley thought it was funny, and his mood during their beer-session on the couch was probably better than if Angel had been properly grateful. “That’ll teach me. He’s not sane. He’s not human. And he’s not me.”</p>
<p>Angel laid the book out against the wall between the two bolt-plates, and he must at least pick them up from time to time because they changed positions; but there was no sign that he was reading. Wesley decided to leave him for a few weeks and then ask if he’d like something different. No hurry.</p>
<p>Wesley got his stitches out on Thursday afternoon and he and Gunn had a long training session in the evening. Wesley was very glad to be able to fight again; he said he hadn’t realised how much his body had come to enjoy the daily challenge. Watching him, listening to him, Gunn felt the need to hold him as an ache solid from his throat to his balls; the need to soak up some of that body’s happiness. He told Wesley, and they switched to doing something tough and repetitive that didn’t involve looking at one another; and neither said anything about “when they got home”, because it was too obvious, and because saying it would bring it too close.</p>
<p>The scar was still unsettled, still hot. Gunn could feel the heat against his lips, and a smell like smoke. He found himself thinking of the first time Wesley had shaken his hand, how he’d remembered the feel of the palm, those calluses all of the rest of the day. The scar gave him so much more to feel: the way the ridge crossed all of Wesley’s fingers and nestled under his thumb. If it had been there that day, he wouldn’t just have remembered the feel of Wesley’s hand, he would have dreamed about it.</p>
<p>“Your hand… is skin.” Angel, about to give the beaker back, frozen at the sight.</p>
<p>“Yes, I got the stitches out yesterday.” Wesley turned his palm upwards.</p>
<p>Angel dropped the breaker, seized Wesley’s hand and wrist, and then sank to his knees and pressed his open lips right over the scar.</p>
<p>“Angel!” Wesley jumped back, or would have but Angel held tight. “No. Let go. This isn’t right.” Gunn was ready - whenever Wesley gave the signal. This was Wesley’s decision, against Wesley’s limits.</p>
<p>Angel had raised his head, but not because he’d heard Wesley. The hand on Wesley’s wrist was still clamped fast, and Angel was watching his thumb as it traced circles on Wesley’s palm. “Skin.” Almost a sigh.</p>
<p>“Angel. Let go. Stop this. Have you forgotten where you are? This isn’t right. This isn’t how you show - You have to let go.”</p>
<p>Angel was looking up as Wesley, faintly puzzled. “But didn’t I…? I thought you let me. You wanted me to…”</p>
<p>“You were concerned before. It was new. I was willing to help answer your questions. But this… This doesn’t help you. You mustn’t forget where you are. What I am. Now be sensible and let go.”</p>
<p>Angel obeyed, but stayed on his knees looking stubborn.</p>
<p>“You dropped the beaker. Could you please pick it up and give it back to me? Thank you. Angel. If you try to do that again, Charles will make you let go.”</p>
<p>Angel was angry now. Not about to lash out, but resenting them hard.</p>
<p>“We’ll see you tomorrow. Try not to forget this.” Wesley turned and left while Gunn stayed to cover Angel and then backed out.</p>
<p>“Woah. Guess I saw somethin’ comin’ but - You OK?” Wesley nodded but looked shaky. “He hurt you? Helluva grip.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked down at his arm and hand, turned them back and forth. “I didn’t… All I noticed was… how cold he is. And I should know from training with him, being in the shower with him.”</p>
<p>“Creepy?”</p>
<p>A pause while Wesley tried to decide on the word. “Startling. Just as startling as… what he did.”</p>
<p>“The skin thing’s new?”</p>
<p>A shrug. “New to me. He didn’t show any sign of that the last time I had stitches out.”</p>
<p>“Or you’d’ve - Well… you’d’ve laughed different that day in the restaurant. When I asked about you ‘n’ him.”</p>
<p>Wesley laughed, very briefly. “I’d have run home.” A frown. “You think it was sexual, then?”</p>
<p>“Oh.” A pause. “Dunno. Y’know how I am about your hand. He’s… Well, he’s not me, either. Way he acted when you warned him off... Could’ve meant anythin’ “ No clues from Angel right now, except that he was angry in a grouchy, personal way; he was out of sight somewhere near the door, muttering and grunting, and laying the odd kick or punch on the wall or floor.</p>
<p>“Oh, that’s awkward.” Wesley sighed and dragged his hand through his hair. “You were right. I confused him. I should have stopped him the first time. Of course he’s angry. He must think… it’s a trick.”</p>
<p>“He’s not that angry. He’s just… Wanted something. Been told he can’t have it. He’ll deal. Like we all do.”</p>
<p>“I hope so. I hate threatening him. It’s sick. To use his fear of the other guards.”</p>
<p>“You had to. He was way out of line.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>The duals said Gunn and Wesley were both better for the break from training, and it was true, they were. They’d got stale, they’d stopped feeling the commitment, really feeling it. (Five weeks now, since the last vision.) But being forced to take a break had shown them they enjoyed the training for its own sake – so they should focus on that from now on, not look for their motivation in the idea of the visions hanging over them.</p>
<p>Saturday. Angel had thrown the books around the room but hadn’t torn any pages out, and he might even have started to read the landscape book. Wesley was out having a language lesson when Angel woke up, so Gunn took the blood in on his own. After a first quirk of surprise, Angel treated Gunn like a piece of blood-carrying furniture and gave all his attention to the doorway, expression slightly puzzled, but hopeful. Looked to Gunn like Angel had forgotten all about the day before - or he thought it was years in the past. He hardly seemed to notice Gunn taking the beaker and leaving, and he kept on watching and hoping for at least five minutes afterwards. Gunn got caught up in searching the news on the computer and didn’t see Angel give up, how he took it; but Angel was sitting on the mattress with the book the next time Gunn checked, and he looked absorbed and content, not like he was trying to console himself.</p>
<p>When Wesley returned Angel looked up from the book. He was obviously pleased to hear Wesley’s voice but he didn’t call or anything, and after a few minutes of listening he went back to the book.</p>
<p>Gunn and Wesley went out for dinner. A date, with Wesley in his suit and all. Compensation (or something) for the night they were going to spend apart, with Gunn helping the boys check out night-time access for some attractions they wanted for their tours. There wasn’t nearly enough street in those three - hell, Wes had more, Wes had a sensible, practical attitude towards breaking-and-entering.</p>
<p>Gunn got about three hours sleep at the beach-house, then drove straight to the warehouse to meet Wesley for training. After training they had breakfast in Santa Monica, and then they went home to bed. Gunn fell asleep afterwards and woke to find Wesley still with him, sitting up reading.</p>
<p>A few hours later, halfway through lunch, Wesley said, “It was sexual. With Angel. It is.”</p>
<p>Gunn stared at him, then said, “He’s done something else.”</p>
<p>Wesley pulled a face, looked embarrassed. “He tried to kiss me last night.”</p>
<p>“Tried how? Why were you in there?”</p>
<p>“Angelus had been there. He’d been doing some drawing. I went in to take the drawings out before Angel could see them. But I was too late and so we talked about the drawings and about Angelus. And after a while he… got this look and he tried to kiss me.”</p>
<p>“ ‘n’ this isn’t your hand?” No. “Jeez. How d’you get him off? Or d’you have the water?”</p>
<p>“He wasn’t - He was… quite gentle. He was asking.”</p>
<p>“How ‘bout taking no for an answer?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “He argued for a while. But he wasn’t aggressive. He didn’t try again. When I asked him what he thought of the book, he went back to talking as if nothing had happened.”</p>
<p>“How long’d you stay after?”</p>
<p>“About ten minutes. It seemed the best way of playing it down.” Wesley shrugged and took a forkful of salad. “I wonder who he thought I was. Who he was seeing.”</p>
<p>“Wha’d’you mean?”</p>
<p>“It’s Angel. He wouldn’t look at me. He likes people who are… solid. Who know how to take up space. Like you.”</p>
<p>Gunn snorted. “Yeah, like he looks at me! Course he’s seein’ you. He loves you. Or close as makes no difference.”</p>
<p>Wesley was shaking his head. “It’s Angel. He couldn’t.”</p>
<p>“You’re the only good thing he’s got. You treat him like a person, you talk to him, like a person. Far as he’s concerned, you’re the only body that doesn’t want to hurt him. So where’s he gonna draw the line?”</p>
<p>“A way of thanking me, you mean? Yes, he might think like that. That would fit.”</p>
<p>Well, Gunn hadn’t meant that, and he hadn’t said that, but it was no loss to him if that was what Wesley chose to hear. Be a waste of words telling Wesley about Angel staring at the door all those minutes, nothing in his head except that Wesley might be on the other side; Wesley would say that was just Angel’s way of feeling grateful, that he might have been waiting to say thank you for the books, or something.</p>
<p>They had a committee meeting for the survey early in the evening, so they prepared for that, and then after the meeting they got Chinese to go and rented a movie. Gunn didn’t have much of his mind of the movie; he kept looking down at Wesley leaning against him, and he kept looking across the room to the other screen, which showed the same thing each time he looked: their prisoner fast asleep, still as death.</p>
<p>Gunn finally had a real reason to throw a jealous fit, and turned out he didn’t know what to feel. A beautiful man had made a pass at his boyfriend. He’d probably do it again, with Gunn right there in the room. No, not a beautiful man. A beautiful vampire. More than two hundred years old and one of the worst, and in love with Gunn’s boyfriend. If you could be “in love” when you couldn’t even learn the person’s name. But wanting to be close to him, wanting more, wanting to have everything he was willing to give. Gunn could sympathise. For the first time he could almost imagine Angel as human.</p>
<p>On Monday morning Gunn was looking hard for signs of Saturday night. There was nothing in the welcome or during the drinking, but then Angel paused while he was handing the beaker back to Wesley and he said, “Can you stay? Stay and talk.”</p>
<p>“What do you want to talk about, Angel?”</p>
<p>A small smile and a shake of the head. “I don’t mind. What do you like?”</p>
<p>Wesley swallowed. “I can’t stay. I have to work.”</p>
<p>Angel looked disappointed; but trying to accept. “I thought… It would be good if I could see more of you.”</p>
<p>Gunn folded his arms. “Which we all know means: ‘I want to have sex with you.’ “</p>
<p>“We do?” Now Angel was looking grateful, straight at Gunn. Then immediately to Wesley, free hand reaching out to Wesley’s waist: “Can you stay? We don’t have to talk.”</p>
<p>Wesley snatched the beaker from Angel and stepped out of range, shaking his head hard. “I’m not going to have sex with you. I can’t have sex with you. You’re a prisoner under my care. Of course we’re not going to have sex.”</p>
<p>Angel took a step to follow Wesley, but Gunn moved in with the water. Angel backed off, not taking his eyes off Wesley for a second, then started shaking his head. “You shouldn’t be worrying about their rules. They never made the rules for this. And there’s no reason they’d ever find out.”</p>
<p>“It has nothing to do with them. It’s wrong. It would be terribly wrong.”</p>
<p>“No!” Passionate. “Not with us. The way we both want it. We want it… to be more. How can that be wrong?” Suddenly, to Gunn: “Tell him. If you tell him what he feels…”</p>
<p>“Man, you heard him say no. You need to get over this and soon. There’s nothin’ for you in this.”</p>
<p>Angel was shaking his head at both of them. “I don’t understand. When we could… There’s no reason.”</p>
<p>Reason and sex. Since when? “We’re going now, Angel. Like Wesley said, we got work to do. Look, know this is rough. We don’t blame you but you gotta accept that it’s no. Even if you don’t understand. You hear me?”</p>
<p>Staring, then Angel turned and went to lie face-down on the mattress, without even taking a last look at Wesley. Stubborn sulking or crushed resignation? They’d find out soon enough.</p>
<p>“Jeez, but he does go for the classics. ‘We both want it.’ ‘I’d like to see more of you.’ Give me two hundred years, I’d come up with better than that.”</p>
<p>“He’s…” Wesley’s gaze slid around Gunn’s for a few seconds. “You really shouldn’t blame him for that. When he -” A ragged sigh. “You know I have a reaction to him sometimes.”</p>
<p>“Oh!” Gunn gave a sharp laugh of surprise, mostly at himself, that he hadn’t thought of it. “Like just now?”</p>
<p>Wesley closed his eyes hard, then nodded. “It must come straight through in my sweat. He knew last time, too.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed again, more gently, then pulled Wesley into a hug, rubbed his cheek against Wesley’s. Feeling Wesley’s arousal wasn’t important; feeling Wesley’s sigh of relief, that was crucial, and the moment when Wesley started to return the pressure. “Well… guess he’s not gonna get over it until you get over that. How long d’you give it?”</p>
<p>“Oh, a week. Now I’ve told you. I’ll just… I’ll think about you laughing.” A pause, then, hushed: “I love you, Charles. I don’t know how you do this. I couldn’t. If it was you.”</p>
<p>“Wes. You make it easy.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Angel spent all of the next few days jerking off - or that was how it seemed to Gunn. Every time Gunn looked up at the screen there Angel would be on the mattress with his pants down near his knees and his shirt wide open. Most times he was quite slow and deliberate, almost loving, but about once in each day he’d be urgent and desperate, crying out so you’d think a vision had hit him. Whenever he started they’d turn the screen off for half an hour, using Wesley’s old method for ignoring Angelus.</p>
<p>No sign of shame or guilt, even when he was waking up after Angelus had been there; instead he’d smile and look towards the door, and then get his clothes back in order.</p>
<p>A shower would have been out of the question, and the effort wasted, anyway, in a couple of hours. From the second day they decided to let him do his own sponge-bath, and after feeding him they took all the equipment in, and a change of clothes. He behaved very well when they were in the room: casual but friendly with Wesley, distant but civil with Gunn, but as soon as they left he’d throw himself down on the mattress and they’d have to turn the screen off again. He didn’t know they could see him; he couldn’t know.</p>
<p>Gunn and Wesley added a new guess every day as to what Angel was building up to; because there had to be thoughts accumulating in there, and this pace just couldn’t last. None of their guesses was right - or not right enough to be at the top of the stack when Angel reached his limit on Friday afternoon. They’d gone in to collect the dirty clothes and the equipment, and they were hardly in the room when Angel placed himself in front of Gunn, set solid for a confrontation. “I know it’s you. Let him.”</p>
<p>“Not makin’ sense, Angel. And back off. Y’got your own space, get into it.”</p>
<p>A sharp shake of the head, no backing off. “You haven’t got anyone. So you don’t want him to have me. You’re stopping him.”</p>
<p>Gunn turned his head. “Wes? You wanna take this?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded, and crossed behind Gunn to stand at his left side. “Charles does have someone, Angel. He has me.” Wesley placed his hand on Gunn’s arm; they looked at one another, then back at Angel. “Even if you weren’t a prisoner under my care. Even if we could meet… as friends outside here. I’d still be saying no, and yes, that is because of Charles. But not because he makes me. Because he’s everything I need. I belong to him. Do you understand now?”</p>
<p>Angel had started out looking suspicious and ended up glaring. When Angel stopped talking Gunn realised that he could hear Angel breathing - a rasping though a clenched throat - and he slowly reached behind his back and unhooked the water-spray from his belt.</p>
<p>“Angel?” Wesley was either prompting or warning - or both.</p>
<p>Two more breaths then Angel gave a loud, harsh laugh and took a big step away from them, almost like he’d been driven backwards by the force of his derision. “You think I know nothing about duals! Or you honestly think you’re the only one who fucks himself. And you even think it’s real. It isn’t sex! Any other dual could tell you that. It isn’t real. You should be looking for more.”</p>
<p>Wesley was about two seconds slower than Gunn in taking in what Angel had said, what he must have been thinking. “Angel. You are completely wrong. We are not a dual. We are two separate people. We were born eight thousand miles apart. And eight years. Or course we’re not a dual. Please. Be sensible. Accept… Accept what we are.”</p>
<p>No. Big no, judging by the muscles working in Angel’s jaw. Suddenly: “Get out.” Cold, and steady. “If you think you can - I thought you were special but you’re worse than a coward. Get out of my sight.”</p>
<p>A brief pause, then Wesley shrugged. “Well, Angel, it’s your room… We’ll just collect what we came in for and then we’ll leave you.”</p>
<p>Angel did a lot of angry pacing over the next half hour. Then he focused on the books and kicked them over to the wall by the door, out of sight of the camera. Maybe he’d meant to tear them all up, but he started reading instead. Each page brought a reaction, some shade of indignation or hurt, and he did rip some pages out, but slowly, and not when he sounded angriest. Eventually he fell asleep there, and they were not at all surprised when he had nightmares and then woke up back in his old hell. Could be days before he’d talk to them again, weeks, maybe.</p>
<p>They took the duals out for noodles after training, and near the end of the meal Wesley said, “Do you mind if I ask you something personal? Or - It’s not because I’ve been wondering about you. It’s something I read.”</p>
<p>“Well, you can ask.”</p>
<p>Wesley cleared his throat. “Do duals - How common is it for a dual to have sex with himself? While he’s split apart.”</p>
<p>A blink then a shrug. “Pretty common, I suppose. First few months after you arrive, when you’re getting used to being a dual… If both halves find the other attractive enough. But…” Badueen pulled a face and shook his head. “I’ve never heard anyone admit to preferring it to real sex.” To Epwor: “Have you?”</p>
<p>“No, never. The subject does come up sometimes, and what you get is a list of the reasons why it’s boring. Or depressing. Not even as good as regular jerking off. Finding out afterwards exactly what the other was thinking. That’s reason number one for most people.”</p>
<p>Badueen laughed. “Though there’s some people you wonder about.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Angel did let them in the room the next day, but he wouldn’t let them get close - gestured to Wesley to put the beaker down and move back - and he watched them intently the whole time. He wasn’t scared, he didn’t seem angry; but he didn’t know what they were and he wasn’t about to trust them. He stayed like that for most of the next few days, braced in his corner, doing some hard thinking.</p>
<p>His expression when he watched them was different from day to day, moving fairly-steadily from suspicion to puzzlement to speculation to a sort of wary sympathy. He differed, too, in who he watched most: one day it would be Wesley, the next Gunn, and the next he’d need to check back and forth between them both. There was no jerking off now. Had he lost all interest in Wesley? Or did he have no thoughts free for any fantasies?</p>
<p>He’d come out of his corner to drink, and then he’d go back and he’d nod to Wesley to come forward to get the beaker. On Thursday, though, he stood just watching them after he’d emptied the beaker, and then he didn’t bend to put it on the floor, but brought it over and placed it in Wesley’s hand.</p>
<p>“Thank you.”</p>
<p>“You’re welcome.”</p>
<p>A few more seconds of watching both of them, then, to Wesley: “Could I have a shower?”</p>
<p>“Of course. We’ll need a few minutes to get ready. Why don’t you get undressed while we’re doing that?”</p>
<p>They decided that Wesley would give him the shower, in the hope that it would help ease him back to normal, back to the time before Wesley got the stitches in his hand. Because since then Wesley hadn’t showered him: there had just been that one shower with Gunn, and then having himself wash himself in his room. And him asking for a shower, that was a sign, wasn’t it, that he did want to get back to normal? He’d got undressed ready for them, and he turned immediately and held his arms back for the chains. Gunn had to stop himself from saying, “Good boy, good boy” – like Angel was a dog.</p>
<p>Wesley washed Angel’s hair first, like he always did. Next came Angel’s arms, then his sides and back. But Wesley had hardly started on Angel’s back when he suddenly stopped, took a step back, and then all three of them were looking down at Angel’s erection.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry.” Angel sounded like he was willing himself to die. He was talking to the wall. And then he turned his head with a jerk and he was talking to Gunn. “I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head then leaned forward to shut the water off. “Hey, man. Happens to all of us. Not like there’s a switch. But you need to go back to your room, yeah?” Angel nodded, so relieved, so grateful. Gunn looked over to Wesley. “Take him straight back? Give him the towel?” Wesley nodded too, looking nearly as relieved as Angel.</p>
<p>“No, Angel. Don’t lie down on the mattress. Just stand right there. Wait while Wesley brings your clean clothes.”</p>
<p>Wesley placed the clothes on the corner of the mattress, then stood back while Gunn let Angel out of the chains. As they were leaving Wesley told Angel to call if he wanted them to come and collect the towel when he was finished, but of course he wasn’t going to call, not after that. Wesley turned the screen off and Gunn was slid the bolts, and they agreed they’d get the towel and the dirty clothes when Angel fell asleep.</p>
<p>Angel did call, though, and only twenty minutes later, while the screen was still off. “Can you - Can you come in?”</p>
<p>He’d folded the towel and put it on the mattress, with the clothes in a neat pile beside it; but he moved in to block them before they’d taken more than three steps in that direction.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>“We know, Angel. Don’t worry about it. You’ve really been very good.”</p>
<p>Angel was shaking his head. “I thought I’d be able to – Since you made me understand.” To Gunn: “I know how you need him.” To both of them: “I know you need to be together. I know how important that is. I wasn’t trying to… I won’t do it again. I’ll make it stop. I will.” He made to touch Wesley’s shoulder, struggled visibly for several seconds, then slowly lowered his hand. “I know you’ve stopped wanting to talk to me. I’ve made you –” Two slow, dragging breaths. “But could you want to again? If I can prove that I have made it stop. Could you want to come in and talk? Or have I made you -”</p>
<p>“Angel. You’ve made me sympathise with your situation, that’s all. I’ll be glad for both of us when you do make it stop. I’ve missed being able to come in and talk to you.”</p>
<p>They went down to start a load of laundry. Gunn said, “So it’s taken him nearly a week to accept that we’re a couple. And that he’s got no chance.”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “That would have taken me months when I had one of my ridiculous crushes. Of course I’d never make a move, so I wouldn’t get anything like the decisive rejection that we gave him. I think he’s being brave. In his terms, he’s giving a lot up. Well, not that I’m -”</p>
<p>“He never had it to give up. But yeah, y’don’t see it like that at the time. Your dick sure doesn’t. What was he thinking, asking for a shower?”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed and nodded. “That he wanted a fresh start? He’s never been very good at thinking ahead.”</p>
<p>Angel worked hard at accepting, at controlling his feelings for Wesley, keeping himself as busy as he could with the books and the drawing-pad. But his subconscious kept letting him down, revealing through dreams and hallucination and Angelus how many thoughts about sex and prison and guards were getting stored away in the course of every day. So he was waking in need of a shower, and not thinking for a second of blaming Angelus; he knew immediately that he’d failed, that he was as far as ever from earning those talks with Wesley.</p>
<p>They decided to let him shower himself. Gunn chained him up as usual, then released one arm once he was in the shower. Wesley stayed out of the way: dealing with the clothes and towel while Gunn and Angel were in the bathroom, and then heating blood or doing the dishes while they were crossing back to Angel’s room.</p>
<p>“He’s disgusted with me.” Gunn was just about to unlock the chains.</p>
<p>“Course he isn’t. He knows exactly what you’re going through. You gotta think - Ain’t easy for him, either. He doesn’t wanna… confuse you.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded. “I want - everything to be right.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Be good, wouldn’t it?”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>“What would you think… if I went in to talk to him? He is trying so hard.” Sunday breakfast by the beach, just after they’d placed their order.</p>
<p>“And you miss talkin’ to him.”</p>
<p>A very brief shrug. “I’d explain that… he’s proved to me that he has accepted the situation. And that’s the most important thing to me, no one would expect him to control every single thought. I’ll explain that I don’t want to make things more difficult for him and he should tell me if it is worse. If it would be easier for him to have me stay away while he’s still… got his crush on me. I think he would tell me if it was worse. Don’t you?”</p>
<p>“Your vampire, Wes. Your call.”</p>
<p>Wesley decided that he would go in, using the excuse of taking Angel some more books. So they stopped at Barnes and Noble on the way back, and Gunn had another coffee while Wesley picked out books on seascapes and on trees. When Wesley offered to stay for a few minutes longer after he’d given Angel the books, Angel shook his head and said he knew he hadn’t earned it, he knew what he must have been dreaming. But Wesley explained, just like he’d planned it to Gunn over breakfast, and Angel listened and stopped arguing. The next day Wesley stayed after feeding, with Gunn taking the beaker away.</p>
<p>When Wesley asked if the visits were difficult for Angel, Angel always said no; and he never tried to touch Wesley, never showed a single sign of expecting anything more. Angel kept on working just as hard at keeping busy with reading and drawing, and his sub-conscious continued just the same. Could take months for this to be really over, as bad as one of Wesley’s dumb crushes. Angel’s clothes would be faded to a pale grey from all the washing.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>“Can you give him a shower?” Gunn had just got back from an evening at Caritas, just walked in the door. “He woke up about half an hour ago. I told him you weren’t here.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, sure.” Not a surprise, since Angelus had been there when he’d left. Wesley couldn’t manage the chains on his own, and felt more strongly even than Gunn that they would never try to move Angel without the chains.</p>
<p>Angel had his back to Gunn in the bedroom, during the walk, and during all the preparation in the shower, and he must have had the erection from the beginning. He’d probably been planning this since Wesley had told him he’d have to wait: how he’d turn, that confident smile, the hand placed at an angle at the top of his thigh, perfect framing.</p>
<p>“Oh, for God’s sake, Angel!”</p>
<p>“What’s wrong? Charles?” Wesley arrived in the doorway and Angel’s erection leapt at the sight of him - or so Gunn guessed when he followed Wesley’s stunned gaze and saw the difference that those seconds had made; and it wasn’t over. Watching the way that cock jerked higher, higher, you’d think the body still had a pulse. How did it feel to Angel, did it feel like turning hot, like with real, living blood? Like Gunn was feeling now, the rush to his face, and the throbbing, the pressure between his legs.</p>
<p>“Oh, Angel. No. After we’d -” Wesley gave a deep sigh. “You should have asked for a sponge-bath. We have to take you back. Turn around and let Charles get your arm.”</p>
<p>Angel was shaking his head, still confident. “I realised. I wanted to show him first. Because I knew he’d…” He turned to Gunn and reached out, and Gunn jumped back, well out of range. “All of us. If it’s all of us. You too. So you’d stay together. You’d be the same. But I could - be with you.”</p>
<p>“What, you’re -” Gunn swallowed. “You’re saying some kind of threesome?” Angel nodded. “In here?” Gunn pointed at the three of them in turn, then again - had to force his hand to stop with the pointing.</p>
<p>“If you want. You can - Wherever you want. Here… I knew I could show you.”</p>
<p>Gunn opened his mouth to say, “Are you fucking crazy?” but Wesley had already recovered enough to give a proper answer. “Angel.” Inhumanly patient. “That’s a very sweet idea but it could never work. Charles and I are… a very possessive and exclusive couple.”</p>
<p>“I know that.” Much less patient. “That’s why I - I wouldn’t change anything. I promise. Why are you - You both know you want me. You’d both have more.”</p>
<p>“We - Yes, we sometimes have fantasies about you. We’ve always thought you were beautiful. But… I don’t know if you remember how we talked about this a while ago. That it’s one thing to enjoy a fantasy. And something else altogether to put it into practice. I’m sorry, Angel, but it could never work.”</p>
<p>“I promise.”</p>
<p>“You can’t make that promise. You don’t know. That’s the - Angel. Think. If we tried it even once and it went wrong… We can’t get away from one another. Not here. I know it’s difficult now, but if we made a mistake like that the situation could become unbearable.”</p>
<p>Angel closed his eyes for a long time, and when he opened them he looked first at Gunn, and then at Wesley. “You can’t leave here.”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“You’re a prisoner. Like me.”</p>
<p>Gunn raised his eyebrows, struck by the idea, and was starting to nod his head (just thinking about it, just thinking about it), when Wesley said, “No. We accepted a duty.” Angel saw Gunn’s reaction; Wesley probably didn’t.</p>
<p>“Did you know it would be me? Are there others?”</p>
<p>“Other prisoners?” Wesley smiled and shook his head. “You take up all our time.”</p>
<p>“And you’re kept apart from the other duals?”</p>
<p>“Completely.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded several times, then turned to face the wall and raised his arm behind his back till his hand touched the chains. “I made a mistake. I have to go back.”</p>
<p>“You understand the mistake now. We can give you time to get yourself clean. We’ll leave you alone for…” A glance down at Angel’s erection. “How long do you think you’ll need?”</p>
<p>A frown. “Can I think about you?”</p>
<p>“You can think about anything you like.”</p>
<p>“Then I’ll need enough for… what you were like.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked at Gunn, fighting hard against a smile (or possibly against hysterical laughter). “We’ll call that ten minutes, shall we? Charles, could you turn the water on?”</p>
<p>Wesley snatched up the keys from the bowl by the door and led the way down to the laundry room, breaking into a run halfway down the stairs. When the door was closed he finally let out that hysterical laughter, and he was helpless with it, slowly sliding down the wall, hand clutched to his ribcage. Gunn laughed from the pleasure of watching Wesley, but nowhere near as hard, and when he dropped to his knees it was from choice. He reached over and put his hand on Wesley’s waist, and Wesley stopped laughing almost immediately and then they were kissing, and falling sideways onto the concrete floor.</p>
<p>Before they went back upstairs they washed as well as they could at the sink in the corner. Angel would still probably be able to smell the sex on them, but it would be too cruel if they didn’t even try. They dusted each other off, but then paused at the door for a long kiss.</p>
<p>Angel was waiting for them with his face turned to the wall, arm ready for the chains. He wouldn’t look at them, barely managed a nod when they wished him a good night - not hiding, Gunn thought, not desperate to block them out, just had enough and needed to be done. Wesley and Gunn got a couple of beers and took them straight to bed.</p>
<p>“Were you thinking about him? Downstairs?”</p>
<p>Wesley pulled a face then quickly shook his head. “Not really. Much more about you. When I was thinking at all. Were you?”</p>
<p>Gunn moistened his lips. “Him gettin’ hard for you. Kept seein’ it.” A deep breath and he closed his eyes briefly. “Still am.”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “It was the situation. For him, I mean.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed. “Where you been all this month? Not much of a ‘situation’ the last fifty times.”</p>
<p>A brief shrug of concession, then Wesley frowned, and worried at his lower lip with his teeth . “I wonder what it would be like. What he’d actually want.”</p>
<p>“Me out of the way, for a start. I’d have to get to fuck him just to remind him I was there.”</p>
<p>“Or you could fuck me. That would work just as well. As a way to remind him.”</p>
<p>Angel seeing Wesley like that. On Angel’s own mattress. Oh, God, but Gunn would show Angel how he did give Wesley everything he needed. How Wesley was his, by right. Hot, but hotter still to imagine Angel loving the sight, loving the sounds. Not wanting anything more, ‘cos there couldn’t be anything better than watching them.</p>
<p>“English. English. You are wicked.” Gunn was almost panting. “You look… so buttoned-up. And then you say things. You make me imagine.”</p>
<p>“Imagine? How could you possibly imagine anything from something as simple as that?” The smallest possible smile. “You’ll have to explain. Though I suspect I’ll be shocked.”</p>
<p>Afterwards Gunn found he was still thinking about Angel, but different thoughts now - about Angel locked away alone in his room. Listening to them, probably, having to listen to them having sex. God, that’d be hell. Gunn couldn’t even imagine it for himself, what he’d be feeling about the two who’d turned him down, who wouldn’t let him in. And he couldn’t start to imagine it, because he couldn’t imagine Wesley not loving him.</p>
<p>A different evening for Angel from the one he must have promised himself. The one he must’ve been sure of when he acted so confident in the shower. Did he think they’d be lovers by now, the three of them, that he’d make it so good they’d none of them want it any other way? Maybe he even thought they’d be sleeping together? Yeah, like… Wesley wouldn’t want to leave when he was so comfortable in Angel’s arms, and Gunn would go and get the quilt from their bed, and they’d all lie together on Angel’s mattress, and maybe they’d fuck some more and eventually they’d sleep. Something like that. He must’ve thought something like that. About how everything would change. That’s what Gunn would have been thinking, if he was Angel – because sex with Wesley, waking up with Wesley, that felt like the biggest change in Gunn’s life.</p>
<p>But he wasn’t Angel, and that meant he knew things Angel didn’t know. The main thing: that Angel couldn’t ever have a lover who’d be close with him like that, who’d feel safe enough with him to sleep in his bed. Angel was too dangerous, the damage to his brain made him too dangerous, and the damage also meant he’d never understand that he was lost forever, he’d have to be alone forever. They could never have slept together. However good it had been, no matter what they’d all wanted, it would have ended with Gunn and Wesley getting up, walking out, and locking Angel in.</p>
<p>Maybe that was Gunn again, though, trying to imagine. Lying with Wesley quiet and happy in his arms and thinking, “If I couldn’t have this… If I was hoping for this and the truth was I couldn’t ever have it…” Maybe Angel just wanted the sex. Maybe he’d’ve been glad when they left, so he didn’t have to talk and act nice, he could just turn over and go to sleep. And what sign had they seen, really, that the thing Angel had for Wesley was love? OK so he was in the mood to want sex now because of Wesley, because Wesley had shown him he didn’t always have to be scared. But it wasn’t any kind of tragic, to be wanting sex you wouldn’t get. Nothin’ like tragic, when you were jerking off as much as Angel. Yeah, he’d get over it. More than that, he’d forget it had ever happened.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Angel was still subdued the next day. He was back to watching them and thinking serious thoughts, but not back as far as the corner; he was prepared to approach them and to take the beaker from Wesley’s hand.</p>
<p>While Angel was drinking, Wesley said, “Angel, I’m not going to stay and talk. Not today. Not for the next few days. We know… you haven’t been finding it any easier to control your feelings even though you’ve been trying very hard. I think it might be easier for you if I keep away. It’s not because I’m angry with you or disappointed. I want to make it easier for you to forget.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded without looking at Wesley, acted like Wesley couldn’t expect him to spare any concentration from the slow, difficult task of drinking.</p>
<p>For the first couple of days after that, Angel looked like he’d given up, and then he started working again to distract himself. Some of his dreams seemed to be about both of them. Difficult to tell since he didn’t use their names, but you could take Angelus as a guide, and Angelus was definitely getting a lot of his thrills from the possibilities available with two people. Seeing Angel getting hard in his dreams - even seeing it on Angelus - Gunn now immediately imagined himself fucking Wesley and Angel getting hard like that from watching. Wesley teased him about this new kink, made a big show of pretending to wonder about earlier signs; all while he was getting his trousers down and urging Gunn on.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>On Saturday evening Angel had a vision, and it hit like it had been accelerating towards him for all of two months. He cried out in pure surprise, and they heard the book hit the wall and then drop to the floor. A longer cry, half-strangled, rising at first but falling by the time they got into the room - and that was Angelus. Gunn immediately ran out to get the chains and gag while Wesley stayed in case Angelus started to speak. The cries took over a minute to become openly hungry, recognisable as Angelus, then they slowly settled to moans of pleasure and the moans continued throughout the chaining.</p>
<p>Gunn and Wesley started to wonder if he was going to speak at all, if he’d been driven into a reaction so primitive it hadn’t any use for words. But the moans finally stopped, and then they learned about the nest of vampires underground at Veteran and Rochester, how they’d collected (would collect?) ten blondes, and the things they’d make the girls do to be the one who got to survive.</p>
<p>There were four girls in the cell, all snatched in the last two hours. The two vampires on guard heard Gunn and Wesley getting into the tunnels and the fight was hard; could have ended very differently if the vampires had known even a tenth what Gunn and Wesley knew about fighting together.</p>
<p>The other vampires (four, the girls thought) were out looking for more girls. They would definitely come back to the tunnels, so it would be enough to lie in wait. Gunn called Rondell, asked for help in getting the girls to safety and in joining the wait for the other vamps. They were home by two and Angelus was still there, still lost in the vision.</p>
<p>Angelus stayed for all of the next day, persisting through several sleeps. He seemed to enjoy the restraints when he was asleep, like he did during the vision as something to bite and stretch against; but he hated them and fought them when he was awake.</p>
<p>Angel, on the other hand, simply endured them - no stretching, no fighting, so it was obvious at a glance on Monday morning that Angelus was finally gone. It wasn’t obvious from looking at the screen that he was deep in hell, but they heard him flinch when they opened the door so Wesley went in already making his soothing noises. Angel was beyond reach, panicked and terrified like they hadn’t seen in months, probably not all year. Wesley had to order him to drink, and the drinking hurt him because his mouth was rubbed raw from the gag. They got out as soon as they could, and left him to hide.</p>
<p>He was the same the next day, when his mouth had healed, and the day after. No more wet dreams. Nothing but nightmares. They seemed to crowd in on him with every sleep, and they were all so loud.</p>
<p>Gunn and Wesley hadn’t been thinking of Angel as “lucid” in the last weeks - not since the day he’d thrown Wesley at the window for trying to tell him that he wasn’t in hell. Obviously Angel hadn’t been lucid, he’d still been walled off in some strange region of his mind. But that region was gone now, crushed to rubble by a vision. And they’d seen that before, when he’d been losing his real lucidity, seen him stripped back to this same state, where he was so deep in hell it was painful to watch. Didn’t seem important any more to tell themselves how he hadn’t really been lucid; he’d been close enough, in his terms, and they didn’t hold back from using the word now. Looking back, they could see he’d been building something for himself, claiming something for himself in those weeks without a vision – but now it was gone.</p>
<p>So it turned out they could have had sex with him that night. They could have taken him from the shower and found out what he was like, what he really wanted. No matter how badly it might have gone wrong, two days later and it would all have been wiped out.</p>
<p>Wesley took it hard. Not sleepless and obsessed and needing to be sent off to San Diego, but sad, almost mourning. That nearly-lucid Angel had given them some hard work, a ridiculous number of awkward moments; but you couldn’t begrudge him any of that when you saw him now. The books frightened him and Wesley took them away; he threw out the two damaged ones and put the others in the bookcase near the door, ready for his next visit to a suitable second-hand bookshop.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>The boys had decided to target their tours at Hull demons, Sas Vanna demons like Yan, and young Chachaspe demons (and similar nest-builders). They’d developed different versions to cater to different interests and different schedules, and had left leaflets in hotels, shops and cafes all over town. Their first customers were a pair of Chachaspe demons from New Mexico, and Piriti and Solito helped them sneak out of the hotel and got them back just before dawn. Very satisfied customers, and new friends for Piriti and Solito; and maybe Piriti was right and Grouw and Matt were wrong, and there were plenty of young nest-builders willing to spend half of their allowance on a guided tour of L.A. Not that Grouw or Matt had ever said a word to discourage Piriti - they kept all their doubts for Gunn.</p>
<p>Their second set of customers was a family of Hull demons. All of them in the family were weird at first about having a human drive them but then seemed to forget Matt was there - until the very end when the father made a big deal of giving him a five-dollar tip. The boys laughed about it, but then agreed that they needed to widen their market once they’d got enough experience at dealing with people, had figured out what people were really looking for in a tour and in their guides. They accepted the fact that Piriti couldn’t go on tours with Hull demons, or that a Chachaspe would never get into a car with Grouw, but they wanted to have at least some tours where they could work properly together as a team, as they always had with the singing and the nest-building. They needed to figure out how to reach the type of demons who either wouldn’t care about the mix or would regard it as a bonus. They asked Gunn for suggestions, asked him to ask Wesley.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Two weeks after the vision, Angel didn’t take the beaker back to his corner but stood to drink it just where he’d picked it up. When he’d finished he held it out towards Wesley, not very far, and not looking at Wesley but at a point in front of Wesley’s face. He went very tense when Wesley started walking towards him, and Gunn thought he could hear the plastic of the beaker creak in that grasp.</p>
<p>“Thank you, Angel.” So much warmth in Wesley’s voice, such genuine pleasure, of course Angel looked up; and of course he was too surprised and bewildered to respond, even with a nod.</p>
<p>Two weeks gone by since the vision. Had it been two weeks from a vision the last time? Gunn couldn’t remember.</p>
<p>“Would you like us to leave you alone?” More surprise, and no response, or not in the few seconds before Wesley nodded and took a step back. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”</p>
<p>Angel stood staring at the door, and then at some point he moved out of sight, maybe on a line towards the door.</p>
<p>He was serious and thoughtful this time, no sign of suspecting a trick, no nightmares. Gunn thought Angel remembered that he’d already been through this. Not the way normal people remembered, not realising that this had happened before. But the moment Angel started to think that maybe Wesley could be trusted, then everything he saw made it seem obvious. So he didn’t need to test Wesley, or wonder why Wesley was different. He knew that Wesley had been sent to look after him, that Wesley couldn’t leave, that Wesley was kept completely separate from the other duals, and that Wesley liked to stay and talk to him.</p>
<p>Gunn and Wesley took bets about when he’d start on the sex again, and how. Gunn thought it would be in the shower (they always let him shower himself now, but he fretted if Wesley wasn’t there), and Wesley thought it would be in the bedroom, while they were sitting talking, probably over one of the books.</p>
<p>They were both wrong, though Gunn was closest on “when”. The wet dreams started again, and then two days later, after handing back the beaker, Angel said, “You were in the shower. You smell of lemons,” and he put his arms around Wesley and he pulled him into a kiss.</p>
<p>Wesley gasped, dropped the beaker, and was trying to push Angel away when Gunn ran up and took an arresting-officer’s grip on the arm that was around Wesley’s waist. “Let go, vampire. Or I’ll burn you to the bone.”</p>
<p>Angel did let go, but slowly, like it was his own idea. Wesley pulled away and stumbled back nearly to the door, and Angel turned to look at Gunn. “He smells of lemons. We have to.”</p>
<p>“You fucking do not. You have to learn right now that you are never going to have him. You’re a prisoner under his care - he’d never betray his duty like that. And he belongs to me. There’s nothing he could make himself accept from you.”</p>
<p>Angel wasn’t impressed - thought too little of Gunn even to be angry at him. He stared at him, eyes narrowed slightly, then said, “You don’t smell of lemons. You were separate. You haven’t been together.”</p>
<p>Gunn snorted. “Lemons, for God’s sake! We sleep together. Most of the time I’m the first thing you smell on him. What you usually say.”</p>
<p>Frowning: “So when were you together?”</p>
<p>Wesley answered. “An hour ago. Then we got up and, yes, I had a shower. Charles likes something different. So he smells of the ocean.”</p>
<p>“An hour?” Angel was very puzzled, and suspicious like they were trying to cheat him. He looked at Gunn then back at Wesley. “Was it - Do you - Is this something you’ve agreed?”</p>
<p>“Well…” A long pause. “We agree on most things, Angel. You’ve seen that, haven’t you?”</p>
<p>Slowly: “Yes, I - I understand.” He slumped, all the energy and fight gone out of him. He took a couple of shuffling steps towards the wall, saw the beaker just before he kicked it, picked it up, was about to take it to Wesley, but then changed his mind and held it out to Gunn instead. “I’m sorry. I won’t do that again. You need to - I know.”</p>
<p>“OK, man. Just… Look. Find something else to think about.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded, then shambled off to sit huddled in his corner with his back to them.</p>
<p>Over coffee they agreed that Angel was much easier to deal with this time; he might even get all the way over his crush on Wesley before the next vision struck. Of course it helped that the two of them knew even more that he did about how his mind worked in this.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry, Charles. I didn’t - When I was trying to -” A sigh. “Well, I knew there’d be times when you’d have to pull him off me, but never like that.”</p>
<p>Gunn smiled and quirked his eyebrows. “So how was it? What’d we miss before?”</p>
<p>Wesley closed his eyes, shuddered, and blushed. “I could taste the blood. And it had done nothing to warm him. It’s a shock.”</p>
<p>“All that about lemons. Wonder what else he notices about you. Think he could draw you from memory?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “He draws women. Not now but… overwhelmingly, in the past. He sees men differently. That’s why… It’s not about me. I’m just the nearest warm body.”</p>
<p>Not true. But Wesley already knew what Gunn thought, and anyway this would be over soon. Nothing could last, not with Angel.</p>
<p>A few days later, when they’d just got back from one of their training sessions on their own, Wesley said, “He thinks we’ve already had sex. That’s how he sees it this time.”</p>
<p>“Who’s ‘we’? The three of us? Or the two of you?”</p>
<p>“The two.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” A pause. “So what I told him about you and me… How he didn’t have a chance. Guess that went straight over his head. Won’t even hear it when you tell him?”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “He’s convinced we’re a dual. He’s got…” A sigh. “I don’t know if it’s one single theory. Or five that shift from day to day. But he thinks you know everything. And that we have an agreement that you pretend that you don’t.” Another, deeper sigh. “In all of his theories, you and I have a very complicated relationship. Whatever I tell him, he just adds another layer to his theory. Because in his mind, he knows we’ve had sex. If I say it was a dream, he thinks I’m teasing him.”</p>
<p>“What sort of dream? Really hot? What does he want?”</p>
<p>Wesley swallowed. “Well… it seems he wants me to come into his room and lie down next to him while he’s asleep.”</p>
<p>“And then beg him to fuck you?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. I don’t think he sees me like that. He just talks about waking up. Seeing that… I’d decided. That I knew it was what I wanted too.”</p>
<p>Waking up with Wesley. Exactly what Angel couldn’t have. Except he thought he did have it. Maybe every day, even? “Huh. So what’s he want next?”</p>
<p>A shrug. “Nothing. He thinks it’s happened several times. He’s sure it’ll happen again. You know how he is with time. Anything could be… ten years in the past, or yesterday.”</p>
<p>“Or right now.” Gunn nodded towards the screen. “You think it looks like that?” Angel was just starting a wet dream. Looked slow, lazy, very welcome – like Angel had found a way to give himself love, as well as sex.</p>
<p>“They all look the same to me.” Wesley checked the time then went over and turned the screen off.</p>
<p>“He’s really stopped askin’, then? If he thinks he’s got what he wants.”</p>
<p>“There are some advantages to his condition.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Part Five</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wesley was having sex with Angel, Gunn was sure of it. He was sure enough by the end of August that he knew he couldn’t just think about it any more, he had to do something about it, and when he looked back at all the signs, he couldn’t believe how slow he’d been to suspect that something was going on.</p>
<p>Gunn thought he had it tracked back now. That kiss with the lemons, that must’ve been the start. Must’ve left Wesley wanting more so he’d gone back in afterwards. The kiss had been on a Thursday, hadn’t it? So Wesley would only have needed to wait till Gunn was out at Caritas - if Angel had been awake then, and safe. Gunn couldn’t remember how Angel had been that night. But with Gunn out working for most of every day, Wesley wouldn’t’ve had to wait more than a couple of days. And since then Wesley and Angel had been sharing a secret: they’d both been making sure that nothing important between them happened in front of Gunn. When Gunn was there it was almost like they ignored each other, hardly even talked. Been weeks now since Gunn’d seen them reading together.</p>
<p>You could say that them ignoring each other wasn’t any sign of a secret, it was just Angel finally got himself over his crush on Wesley, left wondering what the hell he’d ever seen in him. Except it had never been a crush, it had always been love. Or close enough, anyway, that Gunn knew it was something real. A crush would have been Angel having some fantasy idea about Wesley, nothing behind it, would topple over with hardly even a push. But Angel saw the real Wesley, he saw him like Gunn saw him, and that meant Angel would have months to get through before he’d be able to think of anything except how it could have been between him and Wesley. More months before he could even think of pretending like he didn’t care. Gunn knew how it’d be, he could imagine. And he knew that whatever was going on with Angel, whatever Angel might be pretending about, it didn’t have anything to do with making himself accept that he’d never have Wesley. Some days he’d hand the beaker back to Wesley with just a nod, but all the time he was thinking something that kept him quietly happy.</p>
<p>Angel had got like that within days of the kiss with the lemons, and that was how he’d been ever since, whenever he was lucid. The next vision had left him dazed and stupid for a week, too stupid almost to be properly frightened, but then he’d recovered practically overnight, wet dreams, happiness, ignoring Wesley and all. He’d hardly asked any questions, he hadn’t made any move on Wesley.</p>
<p>Well, Gunn had figured out now that Angel hadn’t needed to ask any questions, because Wesley must’ve gone in and told him, Wesley must’ve been the one who’d made the first move. Wesley must’ve explained how Gunn knew everything but how they had to pretend. Because it was such a complicated relationship. They could do anything they wanted, they just had to wait until Gunn was out of the apartment. Did Wesley give Angel a signal with the blood? “Not today.” “Very soon.” “In an hour.” But how would Angel understand an hour? “In the time it would take us to read half the book”?</p>
<p>Before the vision - and still sometimes afterwards - Gunn trusted in Angel’s damaged brain as reason enough for the changes, for Angel’s obvious contentment: Angel thought his dreams were real, he thought Wesley had become his lover. No need to talk or argue or accept less, when his next sleep might bring him everything he wanted.</p>
<p>But then the vision and that overnight recovery - and Wesley had shown no interest in that recovery, not a trace, just shrugged it off. Hadn’t even got low during that lost, dazed week. Like… like he knew exactly how to get his Angel back, was just waiting until Angel was ready.</p>
<p>Angel spent a lot of time now lying on the mattress, on his side near the edge, like he was facing someone. And why wouldn’t he? He was enjoying his memories, waiting for sleep. But soon after the recovery Gunn realised that Angel always lay on his left side - like Gunn did himself when he was in bed with Wesley, because Wesley had to lie on his right side or he couldn’t balance or raise himself up. Maybe that was obvious about Wesley. But it hadn’t been obvious to Gunn until the first time he lay down with Wesley for real. Before then… Well, he’d had his reasons for wanting to block out the idea that some things might not be possible. Angel must have reasons like that too, even more than Gunn. But Angel had got it right.</p>
<p>Gunn knew how Angel had got it right: he hadn’t guessed, he hadn’t imagined, he’d been shown. Wesley had been there, in the space next to him on the mattress. It wasn’t just memories that drew Angel back to the mattress, it was the scent of Wesley in all his stages of sex. If Gunn had a vampire’s senses he’d be able to smell it too. He’d have proof.</p>
<p>And then what would he do?</p>
<p>Because for all Gunn could see the two of them had a secret, and Angel was finally and regularly getting something that satisfied him, Gunn’s mind went spinning into a skid at the idea of his Wesley taking even the first step in what he was suspecting. Not Wesley, when Gunn had seen more than enough to know how much Wesley would risk for himself rather than lie. Sure, Angel might have grabbed Wesley again, might have got further without Gunn there to pull him off. And if Wesley let it happen, Gunn wouldn’t blame him. When you had someone as beautiful as Angel pleading to get into your pants, what was your cock supposed to do? Wesley would have known he’d understand, Wesley would have told him straight after. Unless…</p>
<p>No, Wesley wouldn’t lie to protect himself, but he would lie to protect Angel. So he might not tell Gunn, but he wouldn’t let it happen again, he wouldn’t go in again on his own, knowing what might happen. Not Wesley. He’d never play such a stupid game, he’d never forget what he had with Gunn.</p>
<p>Gunn believed that, he believed that, but then there was Wesley no longer talking to Angel, never talking about Angel, there was Angel on the mattress… And somehow Gunn found himself wondering if Angel had really had those dreams about waking with Wesley next to him, or if Angel really had any complicated theories about them being a dual. Maybe the dreams were Wesley’s cover-story. Maybe the theory was all Wesley’s work, what he’d told Angel to make him be more careful in front of Gunn. Then… had it started so early? So soon after the kiss?</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>On Friday evening they got home by ten after training with the duals, and Wesley headed straight for the fridge to get a couple of beers. As he was opening them, he suggested that they take the beers through to the bedroom and give each other a rubdown.</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head, though Wesley wasn’t looking at him, still busy with the bottle-opener on the far wall. “I - I don’t -” Gunn didn’t feel like he should be taking the beer either, but his hand reached out as if by reflex.</p>
<p>“Really don’t need it?” Wesley looked surprised then shrugged. “Is there something on TV?”</p>
<p>“I don’t -” Gunn took a deep breath. “I have to - I think there’s something going on between you and Angel. You’re having sex.”</p>
<p>“What?” Wesley dropped his beer. They could hear it gulping out onto the carpet but they ignored it, stared at one another. Wesley looked stunned, sick - Gunn couldn’t tell yet how guilty.</p>
<p>“You go in there when I’m not here. You’ve been doing it ever since that time he kissed you.”</p>
<p>“We’re not having sex. Charles!”</p>
<p>“What else would you have to hide like that? Jeez, you can’t even trust yourselves to talk normally in front of me. Not any more.”</p>
<p>“We’re not having sex. Of course we’re not!”</p>
<p>“You do go in to him?” A slow nod. “How often?”</p>
<p>“I suppose… Every day if I can. If he’s lucid enough.”</p>
<p>“And if you know I’ll be out for long enough.”</p>
<p>A pained shrug. “It’s not… It’s not…”</p>
<p>“So what is it? The thing you’ve been doing every day? Knowing I’d stop you.”</p>
<p>“He’s…” Wesley swallowed. “He’s been starved of physical contact. Apart from torture. He can give himself sex. But he can’t give himself…” Wesley looked away for several seconds, to the side. “Simple… Simple affection.”</p>
<p>“So you give it to him. On his mattress. Right?”</p>
<p>“Sometimes. If he doesn’t want to read. If he just wants to talk.”</p>
<p>“Does he get you naked?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“Does he try to kiss you?”</p>
<p>“Sometimes.”</p>
<p>“Does it - Does it get him hot?”</p>
<p>A pause, then Wesley nodded. “But he knows we can’t. He knows I can’t. He does accept.”</p>
<p>“What about… him thinking you’d had sex? Why d’you tell me that? If he knows you can’t.”</p>
<p>“I can’t… without your permission, that’s what he thinks. Sometimes you give it but - He knows not to ask.”</p>
<p>“One of his theories about us?” A brief nod. “Damn, what were you thinking, man? Maybe you didn’t lie, but – What, you reckoned I’d never notice?”</p>
<p>“I thought it would be over in a week. That he’d change again. I never imagined that it would help him so much. And…” A quick shake of the head, almost a shudder. “I suppose I started to think like him. To think that you already knew.”</p>
<p>Gunn was shaking his head. “Been spendin’ way too much time with him.” He thrust his beer into Wesley’s hand then gave Wesley a push in the direction of the bedroom. “Go and get ready for the rubdown. I’ll be through in a minute.”</p>
<p>He dealt with the carpet, treading a towel down and leaving it there to soak up what it could, and then he got another beer. Wesley was naked, stretched out on his side of the bed, cock about half-risen. He looked very apprehensive, like he had some bad ideas about what Gunn might want. He must have some other ideas too, though, because look at his cock. Or maybe it was all mixed together for him? Because of what had happened with that boy at his school, the way he’d ended up working it in with the things that got him hot?</p>
<p>“We’re not gonna have the rubdown, are we? We’re gonna go straight into the fuck.”</p>
<p>Wesley swallowed. “It’s up to you.” Very tense. But not like he was dreading it, like he’d have to force himself to go along with it. Just like he couldn’t start to guess what it was going to be.</p>
<p>Turned out that was exactly as much guilt as Gunn needed to see. He shook his head and reached straight for Wesley’s cock. “Feels to me like it’s mostly up to you.” He was still fully-dressed, hadn’t even taken his jacket off since they got in from training; he liked that sometimes, Wesley too, and this time he went as far as stopping Wesley from pushing his T-shirt up. The minimum - yeah, the bare minimum. Afterwards he did let Wesley help, starting with his shoes, so they could both get under the covers.</p>
<p>“How long had you been thinking that I’d been having sex with him?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged and sighed. “Since he came out of the vision like that. I knew you had to have been talking to him.”</p>
<p>Wesley swallowed, then, after a few seconds: “Thank you for telling me, for giving me a chance.”</p>
<p>“What else would I do?”</p>
<p>A shrug. “Try to catch me out. Come back early. Examine me for bruises. Ask him trick questions.”</p>
<p>“I couldn’t live like that.”</p>
<p>“No.” A hand pressed to Gunn’s chest, then laid gently against his throat. “You couldn’t, could you? What do you want me to do? Should I stop? Or… Just tell me.”</p>
<p>Gunn wanted Wesley to stop; he didn’t want him on that mattress with Angel. But then… who was it harming, where was the danger? And what was Gunn losing? Did he really have enough jealousy in him to say that Angel couldn’t ever have his one friend hold him? A few moments to hold against some of the memories of centuries of torture. It was helping Angel, really helping him. Keeping him calm, making him easier to manage.</p>
<p>“I - D’you have to go in every day? Could you - make it less?”</p>
<p>“Once a week?”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded. “Yeah, like Thursdays when I’m out at Caritas? Or next time he’s lucid after that. I’ll go out for an hour. Can always find something to do.”</p>
<p>“You don’t want to be here?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “I like his theories about us. Stops him hassling me. No point messin’ with’m.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley explained the new rules to Angel on Saturday morning, while Gunn was out getting groceries and videos and catching up with Anne. Wesley blamed the change on Gunn, and Angel took the news very badly and was angry with Gunn; he was huddled in his corner for the rest of the day, alternating between muttering furiously and rocking and hugging himself, just radiating self-pity. Wesley had turned the screen off.</p>
<p>” ‘s the downside of givin’ him somethin’, Wes. When y’have to take it away.”</p>
<p>Angel seemed better on Sunday - out of his corner and back to the books and the mattress - but then Gunn left to join the crew at the beach and Wesley found out that Angel had not accepted the change but simply forgotten. He’d been listening for the sound of Gunn leaving, and when Wesley didn’t come to him after all, he was so disappointed and angry that he vamped up, ripped one of the books to shreds, and threw the mattress halfway across the room. Wesley put his earplugs in and shut himself in the bedroom to read, and he was still there when Gunn got back. Wesley said he’d forgotten about Angel, seemed surprised to see him so deeply asleep on the floor. Gunn didn’t want to leave again after that, not after seeing the state of the room, but Wesley just laughed and said he’d rather deal with Angel in a tantrum any day, rather than a bored, cooped-up Gunn.</p>
<p>Wesley bought a couple of new books, took them in on Monday evening, and then sat and looked through them with Angel for about half an hour. Angel was restless and distracted, paying far more attention to Gunn than to the books or to what Wesley was saying. He jerked his head up towards the door every time Gunn typed a new search term or put down his pen or mug; and when Gunn walked over to the kitchen Angel got so excited, he was almost shaking with it. He was waiting for Gunn to leave, and so Wesley had to explain again, in a whisper, while Gunn was in the kitchen waiting for the water to boil. Gunn saw Angel ask a question, Wesley give a patient answer and then Angel frowned down at the floor for a long time, even after the water had boiled and Gunn had gone back to the computer. Gunn was about to give up on watching when Angel suddenly put his hand on the book, turned the page – ten times harder than necessary, making it crackle and leaving it creased – pointed at something on the new page and grunted a question, and so they were back to reading. Angel’s hand stayed on the book, always close to Wesley’s, maybe touching sometimes, especially when they turned another page. Angel wasn’t paying attention to the book, though, any more than he had before; his eyes were closed most of the time, even while Wesley was pointing something out to him. Shutting down, or drifting away. Slowly. Very slowly. Wesley carried on talking until he couldn’t turn the page because of the weight of Angel’s hand, and then he carefully eased himself out from under the book.</p>
<p>That was Angel for all of the next few days: some shade of angry, watchful or withdrawn. He was always glad to see Wesley, always welcomed him, but then he didn’t seem to know how to talk to him; Wesley had to do all the work. Angelus was just plain angry and horny, and Angel’s dreams were somewhere in-between, full of impatient or puzzled sounds.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Angel was lucid on Thursday night, and was sitting in his corner reading when Gunn gave Wesley a long kiss and then left for Caritas. Wesley hadn’t tried to explain the new rules to Angel; “once a week” would mean little to Angel, and “Thursday evenings, if you’re lucid” would probably get Wesley thrown across the room. Gunn hadn’t decided yet how much he was going to ask Wesley about Angel’s reaction, how pleased and surprised Angel had been.</p>
<p>Matt was the only one at the table when Gunn arrived and Gunn didn’t go straight to the bar to get beers but went over to ask about the others. Matt said it looked like they weren’t coming.</p>
<p>“Both got problems at home?”</p>
<p>Matt shook his head, pulling an unhappy, resigned face. “Problems with me. We had a big argument, um... Tuesday.”</p>
<p>“Yeah?” The boys arguing about more than top-10 songs or films or games? “Buy you another beer if you tell me about it?” A smile and a nod from Matt.</p>
<p>“So what’s up?”</p>
<p>“I’ve got a girlfriend. She doesn’t know about any of this...” A gesture round the bar, at the stage. “And I’m not gonna tell her.”</p>
<p>“Why’s that?”</p>
<p>” ‘cos it might freak her out. I don’t wanna make it like this big test for any girl who ever dates me.”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Doesn’t have to be. Meet a girl here, she already knows.”</p>
<p>“Man, you must not notice girls at all. Couldn’t meet more than thirty new girls here, not in a year. And a girl I want to date. Who wants to date me... Been comin’ here for three years – I’ve figured out now it’s never gonna happen. And the same three years there’ve been four, five girls from, y’know, classes, the beach. ‘n’ I never did anything ‘cos I just couldn’t see how to fit them in.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. OK.” Gunn nodded slowly, seeing Matt’s point. “So why’re the guys pissed at you? You took them through the math, right?”</p>
<p>Matt looked really unhappy. “Well, there’s more math. Like... what happens with the tours and the singing and Piriti’s nest when I’m seeing Holly two, three times a week. I wanna –” A sigh. “She came over on Monday for the day. First time. She surfs. She’s at UCLA. She’s into... what different animals do with their energy. What they have to do to get it in the first place. She really sees things.”</p>
<p>“Sounds cool.” Gunn was remembering his first real evening alone with Wesley, realising for sure what he’d only guessed before: that he’d never met anyone like this. Exciting. God, yes. Big difference with Matt, though, was Matt had someone he could tell it to.</p>
<p>“Yeah. So she asked about the weekend ‘n’ I said I had a family thing. So we’re doing Monday again. But we’ve only got vacation for another couple of weeks and then – There’s not enough evenings. There’s not enough Sundays. ‘n’ I don’t want to be lying to her, anyway. ‘bout the other evenings. Not like we’re a couple or anything, not like she’s lookin’ to move in, but I don’t wanna feel like I’m always… keeping her over there.” He made a chopping movement with his hands, one hand over the table, the other far over in the space to the side.”</p>
<p>“Y’know, maybe you should tell her, man. If she sees things, like you said. Hell, what sort of energy would she see here? The guys’d like her, wouldn’t they?”</p>
<p>All of a sudden Matt was really angry. Maybe not at Gunn personally, but definitely at someone. “Knowing about demons isn’t the only thing about a person. It isn’t that important. Y’know I love the guys, but – I’m not gonna spend the rest of my life waiting for the one girl in ten million to walk down those steps. And jerkin’ off over –” A deep breath, then he shook his head hard. “Not gonna do that. Just because someone brought me here as a joke, when I was still practically a kid, ‘n’ I got hooked on karaoke for a couple of years.”</p>
<p>“So you’re what...? Done with karaoke? Droppin’ the tour business? Just like that? You’ve only been datin’ for a few weeks. Not even a couple, you said.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but I been thinkin’ about this all year, ‘specially since... you told us about you and Wes.”</p>
<p>“What about us?” What the hell had he told them? Jeez, not about leaving his crew? No, course he hadn’t. And that was different anyway. He’d known by then that he was in love with Wesley, they both did. And he had to, because of Angel. “What’s that got to do with anything?”</p>
<p>“Well, ‘cos... you used up your one in ten million chance. Hundred million, maybe. Yeah, fair bet that you’d meet soon enough, I know there’s fifty guys, max, do anything like you do. So let’s say five of those’re gay ‘n’ – C’mon, how long’d you been looking?”</p>
<p>“Wasn’t like that. I wasn’t looking. We weren’t. We just found that... it worked.”</p>
<p>“I know. Y’look like it shouldn’t but –” A sigh. “So. Yeah. Been thinkin’ more and more that somethin’ was missing. Still havin’ a blast with the guys but... I want someone I can talk about the way you talk about Wes. Dunno yet if that’ll be Holly. Done the right thing, though, in making a start.”</p>
<p>“So how d’you tell them? On Tuesday. You told them about her before?”</p>
<p>Matt shook his head. “Made it sound like I’d been bowled over by her out of nowhere. Didn’t tell them any of that stuff I’d been thinkin’ Nothin’ ‘bout you ‘n’ Wes. Said I didn’t know what evenings I’d have free from now on. Or not until I’d figured out Holly’s routine. Y’know, round her classes, other friends. Guess I made it sound like she was pushin’ me around and she’s not, it’s me who’s... Man, I am so out of practice at dating, figurin’ out the give ‘n’ take with someone I barely met. But yeah, next month or so it all fits around her. And even after that I don’t see how I’ll be able to take on any tours. Not with those hours. But they just need someone who can drive. Who’s cool with Hull demons and Chachaspe demons.” A sigh. “And who’d do it for ten bucks and a bowl of noodles.”</p>
<p>“Hey!” Gunn acted indignant. “Who’s been showin’ you my resume?” They laughed but Matt soon turned serious again.</p>
<p>“Would you really wanna do it? It’s just driving. I know you’re used to more. Money, too.”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “I’ll help out. Least I can do. While they look for someone else.”</p>
<p>“God, that would – I know I’m really lettin’ ‘em down. Piriti...” Matt was shaking his head. “Grouw’s just pissed at me, thinks I’m being a gutless, selfish jerk. But Piriti... Grouw ‘n’ I knew the tours were just a game. Like workin’ on a new song. Teachin’ Piriti to surf. Might not have much at the end, but...” A shrug. “Got some great stories. Never realised Piriti saw it as... Dunno about ‘his ticket out’ but... Some kind of big chance to prove something, him and Solito. Don’t see him forgivin’ me.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded. “I’ll call Grouw tomorrow. They’re really not gonna show tonight, are they?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“Guess you don’t wanna sing?”</p>
<p>“God, no.”</p>
<p>“Wave-Race sound any better? We could get pizza, if you haven’t eaten.”</p>
<p>Matt was already nodding and draining his beer, and ten seconds later they were on their feet and heading for the door.</p>
<p>They got close to breaking into Glacier Coast. It was that stupid, bending tunnel in Port Blue – they could neither of them handle the curves except by sheer luck, and it kept knocking them out of the game. If they could just sit down for two hours (or four) and do nothing except run that tunnel... But they could only get to it by running the rest of the course. Next time, they’d crack it next time – Matt said he’d call when he knew he had an evening free. Matt hadn’t said anything about introducing Gunn to Holly some day – was Gunn too hard to explain without bringing in the “D” word?</p>
<p>Gunn didn’t get home until gone midnight. The apartment was nearly in darkness, and Angel and Wesley were both asleep and dreaming. Angel was enjoying his dream, but Wesley was fighting something, and hard. He fought Gunn when Gunn tried to hold him (fighting like he thought he had two arms) and then suddenly he was awake, looking up at Gunn and gasping.</p>
<p>“Some dream, English. What were you fighting? Anything I know?”</p>
<p>“I – I – I can’t remember. I think it had tusks. Did I wake you up? I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head. “Just got in. Ended up ‘round at Matt’s, playing that racing game.”</p>
<p>“Oh. At Matt’s. I thought they must have been singing everything they knew. Maybe got into a competition. They have those, don’t they?” Wesley was reaching over to get his glasses. He sounded tired, not really awake.</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head, pulling a face. “Won’t be doing any singing for a while.” And he told Wesley about what Matt was doing. It was meant to be the short version but Wesley asked questions and Gunn did want to talk. He hoped that Grouw and Piriti would calm down, that they’d find a way to stay friends – like he had with the crew (eventually). He’d help out with the tours, keep in touch with Matt.</p>
<p>Wesley was smiling at him. “I’d never imagined you as a matchmaker. That’s probably why you’ll be perfect.”</p>
<p>“A matchmaker? God, maybe I would’ve if I’d know Matt was looking. I just don’t like to think of them stayin’ mad at each other. They’re a good team.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “Good to us, too. You should definitely call Grouw tomorrow. Maybe he’ll meet you for a drink after training.”</p>
<p>Gunn lay and thought for a while about how things might go with Grouw, how much he should sympathise, how much he should put Matt’s side. Grouw probably wouldn’t listen, not this soon – especially not to one human trying to put the case for another human.</p>
<p>“Wes? D’you think Matt is being a selfish jerk?”</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t reply for at least five seconds – maybe thinking, maybe dragging himself back from sleep. “No. Not really. I suppose he could have told the others sooner. Before he met this Holly, as soon as he decided it was that important to him. It would have been better if they hadn’t started the tour business. But I can sympathise. Most people go through their entire lives without needing to find out about demons. That doesn’t make them stupid or weak. There’s no need to hold it over them as a test, as if they have a duty to know.”</p>
<p>Would help Gunn to figure out how to talk to Grouw if he knew what Grouw’s attitude was about humans knowing or not knowing about demons. Gunn had never once heard Grouw or Piriti joke about humans being clueless about demons, not like you’d hear in the crew – about the wrong types of humans, anyway. (Yeah, yeah, OK, about humans who looked and talked like Wesley. But Gunn bet the crew thought twice about that now.) Maybe he’d get further with Wesley’s first idea: ask Grouw how Matt could have handled things better.</p>
<p>Gunn went in a few lazy loops and circles, knowing his plans could all change with the first word out of Grouw’s mouth. Might not need any “matchmaking” at all – they might just find they missed each other enough to do all the work themselves. Yeah, enough planning and thinking. Forget it. Leave it until tomorrow. Go to sleep on something else.</p>
<p>Gunn closed his eyes and cleared his thoughts, imagining his mind as a clear tidal pool. With barnacles. And anemones and birds overhead, and kids playing on the next beach over.</p>
<p>Was Angel’s good dream anything like this? Maybe even with the sunshine on the rocks. Did he dream about being human? Like Wesley dreaming about his arm. Probably too long ago for his mind to be able to make it real. What about dreaming that he was free? He must do that at least sometimes.</p>
<p>“How was he tonight, Wes? Has he got any new theories?” No reply. Wesley was asleep.</p>
<p>Wesley was up and dressed when Gunn woke the next morning: at his desk deep in a translation, tracking down an idea that had suddenly come to him while he was dozing. He’d made the coffee but hadn’t fed Angel yet, so they did that as soon as Gunn was dressed. Angel was in a good mood, seemed somehow glowing with energy, like they’d caught him in the middle of a workout. Did vampires even have hormones like that? Or was everything – breathing, erections, everything – just faked up by the demon?</p>
<p>Gunn waited for Grouw’s lunch-break before calling, just in case Grouw was looking for any excuse to be pissed at a human, but Grouw was pleased to hear from him. “I was gonna call you at the weekend. Ask for your take on what’s going on with Matt.” They arranged to meet at the noodle place at half past nine; Wesley would take the duals someplace else, if they wanted to be taken.</p>
<p>For the evening’s training, Wesley asked for some practice in hand-to-hand combat. Obviously his chances in hand-to-hand weren’t good but they might not always be able to avoid it – he might lose his weapon, or get taken by surprise and have to go in unarmed – and there must be something that the duals could teach him that would take his chances from “pitiful” to just “discouraging”. The duals agreed but they insisted on leaving the hand-to-hand till the last half hour of the session, and then at the very end they admitted they’d known Wesley would take so many knocks in the hand-to-hand that he wouldn’t be fit for anything else afterwards.</p>
<p>Wesley drove himself home for a bath, and Gunn dropped the duals off at a bar and went to meet Grouw. As Matt had said, Grouw thought Matt was being a gutless, selfish jerk, but it was more like “callous, unrecognisable traitor”. The way Grouw told it, Matt had more-or-less said, “I’ve finally met a really cool person, so I don’t have to hang out with you losers any more.” Like the only reason they’d ever been friends was because he’d been too lazy to look for anything better. Had they ever really known Matt, if he could act that way?</p>
<p>Gunn said he was sure it hadn’t been like that, that he thought Matt had probably hated having to make the choice and maybe there’d been times when he’d made the choice the other way, over other girls he’d liked. Gunn tried to make it sound like he was just guessing, but Grouw asked if Matt had told him that. Gunn shrugged. “Y’read between the lines, don’t you? But it’s – Think he came across cold ‘cos he didn’t know how to handle it.”</p>
<p>Grouw shifted about an inch in admitting that Matt might have acted weird because he felt weird rather than because he felt nothing, and then they left Matt and moved on to Piriti and the tours. Grouw thanked Gunn for the offer to drive, but said they’d probably never take him up on it.</p>
<p>“We’ve got nothing booked. We talked about what we could do, with just the two of us.” A deep sigh, and Grouw shook his head. “One minute Piriti’s talking about pushing the human market, people like Matt used to be, who won’t be freaked by a Chachaspe hanging out with a Hull – ‘cos they just don’t know. Talking about working up ten more types of tour, about putting the leaflets everywhere. And then the next minute he’s saying it’s hopeless and pointless and we should go round and take all the leaflets back ‘cos he doesn’t want to get a call from some Chachaspe kids and have to tell the kids we can’t do it. You don’t wanna get messed up in that, believe me.”</p>
<p>“Whadda you say to him? And whadda you want to do?”</p>
<p>“I say, ‘Let’s just wait and see. No need to do anything just yet, either one way or the other.’ Yeah, I’d be happy to drop the whole thing. Can’t see it being fun anymore. But drop it quietly, ‘cos... we decided we already got what we wanted out of it. I’m not going to let him do it his way, try and make it like it never happened. Or not yet. It’s too soon.”</p>
<p>“What if some of those kids do call? D’you want me to say I’ll drive them? Loan them Wesley’s car or something? Or isn’t that the help he needs?”</p>
<p>“Oh, I dunno. Maybe the kids’d say something that’d help him accept. Or they’d be assholes and he’d be glad to give it up. We’re digging tomorrow. You wanna come and see what you think?”</p>
<p>For the second night running, Wesley was asleep when Gunn got home, though this time Gunn was home before eleven and the lights were on, including Wesley’s reading-light in the bedroom: Wesley had fallen asleep over his book.</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t wake up when Gunn was taking his glasses off or sliding the book out from under his hand, but he must have woken at some point during the night and pulled the pillows down flat. He was covered in bruises. Gunn wasn’t sure at first how to touch him, if he should even try, but Wesley soon put him clear. Afterwards – and it was a long gap because Wesley was in a very lazy mood – Wesley said, “I love the way you touch me. Even in the few hours of the year when I don’t particularly want sex, your hands always say... ‘Everything is right.’ “</p>
<p>“Yeah?” Gunn slid his right hand slowly down to Wesley’s hip, still gentle because of the bruises, though Wesley didn’t seem to feel them, just acted like he was stiff in his muscles. “Well, from where I’m looking, everything is pretty-damn good. Somethin’ botherin’ you? Is it Matt and the boys?”</p>
<p>A pause, then Wesley nodded. “A bit. I’ve been thinking of the reasons someone might give up his closest friends. I don’t think I’d ever have the strength. It must take a lot of courage if you’re doing it for a real reason.”</p>
<p>Wesley had been ready to give up Gunn for Angel’s sake. Maybe he’d forgotten. Or maybe it was just so different from what Matt had done.</p>
<p>They got up late, far too late to go training. Angel was asleep, and was still asleep when they came back from buying groceries and renting videos but by then he’d moved on to a passionate wet dream, full of moaning and grunting and sudden movements. They turned the screen off for half an hour, and when they turned it on again, Angel was awake.</p>
<p>Gunn took Angel into the shower while Wesley vacuumed the bedroom and then laid out clean clothes. Angel was still in a good mood: not spectacular like the day before, but good enough to want to talk to Gunn for most of the time they were in the bathroom, starting with “soap vs. shower gel and which Gunn preferred” and ending with a discussion of whether there was any accurate way of describing a man’s musculature, or whether the best you could do was compare him with someone else (“We’re similar, aren’t we? You could compare us?”). Gunn didn’t have much to say on any of Angel’s subjects, but he tried to act interested, not stomp on Angel’s good mood.</p>
<p>After Angel dressed himself, they fed him, and then Wesley stayed to read with him while Gunn went to do his usual Wyndham Gunn searches online. Wesley had been too busy to spend time with Angel the day before, but you couldn’t tell if Angel remembered, if he’d noticed something missing; probably meant he didn’t remember, or he’d’ve been sulking and blaming Gunn.</p>
<p>“No, it doesn’t. I told you to stop that.” And the sound of the book slamming closed. By the time Gunn had turned to look, Wesley had dropped the book and was pushing himself away from the wall, getting to his feet. Angel was still sitting in his usual reading position, looking bewildered. Wesley presumably looked furious, but he had his back to the camera.</p>
<p>“Can’t I tell you what I see?” Angel had picked up the book and was holding it out to Wesley, asking, not arguing.</p>
<p>Wesley snatched the book and threw it backhand hard enough that it hit the wall, near the door. “It’s not a joke!”</p>
<p>Angel and Gunn both stared at Wesley, then both stood up (Angel in a scramble, Gunn slowly) and took cautious steps towards Wesley. Wesley backed away from Angel and Angel stopped, and so Gunn stopped too, still several feet from the door.</p>
<p>“I’ve hurt you.” Slow. Almost a whisper.</p>
<p>“You know you did.” Almost a shout.</p>
<p>Angel reached out again, but of course Wesley moved back again, and this time it looked like he had flinched. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to... Stay. Let me...” Angel shook his head. “I won’t do that again. Please. Stay.”</p>
<p>“No. I told you to stop. More than once. But you always just do what you want. You can say anything, I won’t believe you.” And Wesley turned and left, slamming the door closed.</p>
<p>“Jesus! What the fuck did he do?”</p>
<p>“Oh.” Seemed like Wesley didn’t want to be near Gunn either; he’d barely looked at Gunn before heading for the kitchen. Gunn followed, taking four feet as his safe distance. Just a guess: he’d probably get yelled at, anyway. “He kept on saying that things in the book reminded him of me. Stupid things. A mandolin. A group of trees. He was being stupid. Stupid and more and more insensitive.” Wesley was making himself a mug of tea.</p>
<p>Insensitive? “You mean... about your arm?”</p>
<p>A shrug. “About anything he could find to be stupid about.”</p>
<p>Gunn moved closer, right up to the doorway. “And he wouldn’t stop.”</p>
<p>“Sometimes he doesn’t. He doesn’t listen. He acts as if you don’t matter.”</p>
<p>Gunn thought about how Angel had hurt Wesley in the last few days when he’d been truly lucid. When he’d known exactly what he was saying. But Wesley was different now, he was stronger: this time he’d gotten angry.</p>
<p>“Must’ve been something in his dream set him off. He was kind of like that in the shower. Asking me about shampoo. Conditioners. Guess he’s never bothered to look above my eyebrows.”</p>
<p>Wesley laughed, then nodded. “Yes, that sounds like a warning. I wish I had a test. Something to ask him first thing to see if it’s one of his stupid days. Would you like some tea?”</p>
<p>Gunn said yes and they took their teas to the couch and talked about work and about beer for that evening, and about training early on Sunday and which beach they’d go to afterwards. Angel wasn’t on the screen but they could hear pages being turned very slowly; he must be over by the door. Was he waiting, hoping for Wesley to change his mind? Or was this the sound of Angel over all that, showing he didn’t care?</p>
<p>Gunn hadn’t been looking forward to the digging – sounded like Piriti was going to be really hard work – but he was glad to get out of the apartment and then glad to be out in the sun and to have something to keep him busy with his entire body. Seeing Wesley shout at Angel, slam the door on Angel, when Wesley was never more than exasperated. Gunn still felt the shock, almost like Wesley had been shouting at him too. What the hell had Angel said? And why the hell had he said it? Had he really meant it as a stupid joke, like Wesley thought? Angel didn’t know how terrible it had been for Wesley to lose his arm. It had been a different Angel who’d known Wesley with two arms, who’d seen the blood and the pain. This Angel probably thought Wesley was exactly the way he was meant to be. So maybe Wesley had reacted too hard, but he had told Angel to stop, he’d given him a chance and Angel had to learn somehow, not to be stupid, not to joke about that.</p>
<p>Piriti wasn’t hard work, hardly mentioned the tours at all after thanking Gunn for his offer of help. They did a lot of singing, Piriti and Solito starting off with “Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night”, and then finally getting Gunn to join in with “It's Still Rock and Roll to Me”. Gunn wondered if they were hoping he’d take Matt’s place at Caritas but there was no hint; never meant to be a hint, they just liked singing.</p>
<p>The end was odd, with everyone acting like it was normal for them all to just split up back to their own homes. No beach-house now, no place for them to hang out and watch TV and do normal “friends” stuff. Matt might have given them a set of keys but then he’d probably be there right now with Holly.</p>
<p>“How’s he been?” Gunn’s first question when he got home. Angel was somewhere out of sight of the camera.</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “Noisy. He kept on talking to himself. Doing a lot of banging and scraping. And then nightmares or possibly hallucinations. I think he’s asleep now. He’s scarcely moved away from the door.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I’d’ve taken bets on the nightmares. You gonna stay mad at him?”</p>
<p>A sigh. “I don’t know. If he shows that he did listen... The way I still feel now, I’d want to ask you to feed him for me tomorrow. But I do have to see how he behaves with me.”</p>
<p>Gunn smiled. Not knowing if he was going to stay mad. Needing more information before he could decide. That was his Wes. “You don’t sulk.”</p>
<p>A harsh laugh. “Oh! I sulk to an Olympic standard. But I do it by getting pompous and self-righteous. I don’t think anyone has ever recognised it for what it is.”</p>
<p>Wesley had made a special sauce for the pizza, and the rich smell seemed to fill the apartment. There were anchovies in the sauce but Gunn was OK with that because Wesley had promised he’d only use one and he’d shown how finely it would get chopped, so after it had been cooking for an hour it would be pulp, nothing to suddenly bite into.</p>
<p>They started watching the first movie, but Gunn stopped the tape when it was time to eat. “Y’know, it must be near-on a year since the first time you cooked pizza for us.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “A week next Tuesday.”</p>
<p>“God! I’d never looked forward to a date more. Not in my whole life.”</p>
<p>Wesley’s half-smile. “Not that I knew it was a date. The most I was hoping for was to keep you entertained all evening. Not have you bored. I’d been telling myself that you probably didn’t hug your friends goodbye like that every time you saw them.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed hard, then shook his head over and over. “Don’t they do that where you come from? Not at all?”</p>
<p>“Not with me. People don’t see me like that.”</p>
<p>“Oh, man. I didn’t at first. But getting close to you... Jeez, it’s addictive.”</p>
<p>Very quietly: “I don’t deserve you.”</p>
<p>Gunn just shook his head and pulled Wesley into a kiss.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>They were up at seven on Sunday to go training. Angel was awake and they decided to feed him first. He must have heard them getting up and then the sound of the microwave, because he was standing waiting for them just a few feet inside the door. He had his sketchpad in his right hand and he held it out to Wesley, looking as uncertain as the day before, with the book.</p>
<p>“I can’t take it, Angel.” Impatient. “I haven’t got a free hand. Why don’t you give it to Charles?”</p>
<p>Angel studied Gunn for about five seconds before he offered him the pad. “I’m sorry. I thought he was... I don’t know how else to see him.”</p>
<p>Gunn took the pad, looked at Wesley and they both shrugged, and then Wesley made Angel take the beaker. “What do you want us to do with the pad, Angel? Is there something wrong with it?”</p>
<p>Angel didn’t seem to want to look at Wesley now – he made his reply to Gunn. “I don’t know. He said... I couldn’t. But I had to do something.”</p>
<p>“Well, we’ll check it out for you. And I’ll go and get you a new one while you’re finishing that.” Gunn left the pad on Wesley’s desk and got a fresh one from the drawer. A new crayon too, in case that was the real problem. They’d check the pad when they got back after training. They knew he hadn’t had a vision, so there couldn’t be anything important in it.</p>
<p>They went straight out for training and Wesley forgot the last of his stiffness in a good long swordfight. They got breakfast from Starbucks in Manhattan Beach and took it down to the beach. They didn’t talk about Angel.</p>
<p>The pad was full of drawings of Wesley. No, not full, just three, but Angel must have been working on them all night. Wesley in profile, head bent, mouth open like he was speaking. Wesley’s hand on a book, about to turn the page. And from the waist up, full-face, and naked. So Angel remembered when Wesley used to shower him, he could draw the scars from memory. And he’d noticed Wesley’s ring: it was in both of the pictures that showed Wesley’s hand.</p>
<p>Angel had no other way of showing he was sorry. There was nothing else he was able to give.</p>
<p>Wesley turned the pages slowly, saying nothing, showing no reaction after a first gasp of surprise. He turned them back even more slowly, then closed the pad and opened the drawer where they kept the stack of blank pads.</p>
<p>“Don’t, Wes.” Gunn put his hand over Wesley’s, stopping him from picking up the pad. “Keep it somewhere safe. You give it back to him, you know what Angelus’ll do.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked at Gunn, still almost expressionless, then nodded and pushed the drawer closed with his knee. “I’ll put it with my books. Most of them have survived a hundred years. I think that’s a guarantee of some sort.”</p>
<p>After Wesley had put the pad away, on a bottom shelf, Gunn said, “So’d he do the right thing? Or’d he make it worse? Lookin’ at you, could be either.”</p>
<p>A deep sigh, which still could have been either, then: “I’ll go in when he wakes up. I’ll thank him.”</p>
<p>“You want me to leave the apartment? Just say how long.”</p>
<p>“What?” Finally, a reaction: surprise. “Why would you leave?”</p>
<p>“What you gonna do? Stand at the other side of the room and say, ‘Thank you. I can see that you’re sorry.’ Have to do more than say it. With me, with him, with anyone. If he’s still got the same theories, then I need to get out. Don’t want to mess with those theories.”</p>
<p>Wesley really couldn’t decide, looked almost stupid for about ten seconds there. Finally, shaking his head, “I’ll just read with him for a while. That should be enough contact. But thank you. It was a kind thought.”</p>
<p>They had a meeting with the survey committee scheduled for that evening, so they prepared for that then caught up on paperwork. Angel started to dream, talking in his sleep, then the dream turned into a fake vision: of Doyle, probably about how he died. Angel shouted out Doyle’s name, over and over, pleading. The drawings were confused, just snatched details, impossible to tell what was happening, except that there was a man in pain, and a spine-faced demon snarling.</p>
<p>“He took on the demon, right? That’s how he saved Angel’s life?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “That’s a Brachen demon. Doyle was half-Brachen. That must be him. Maybe he always fought like that. I don’t know.”</p>
<p>Angel stopped shouting quite quickly (maybe ten minutes?), and then he huddled and shivered and muttered. Sometimes he cried out, but just a few words at a time. Doyle’s name must have been Francis; Wesley hadn’t known that.</p>
<p>Angel was still stuck in his vision when they left for the meeting, but was asleep on the floor when they got back. He woke lucid around ten, when Gunn and Wesley were sitting on the floor around the coffee table, drinking beer and playing a game about naming movies and cities and songs and food.</p>
<p>Angel looked exhausted. He was propped against the wall near his corner, head bowed, facing away from the door. He looked around and up when Wesley went in, but then let his head roll back almost immediately, with gravity doing all the work.</p>
<p>“Angel? Can I talk to you?” Wesley had crossed the room and was kneeling a few feet from Angel. The head turned again, slowly, then nodded. “I wanted to thank you for the drawings. You put a lot of care and thought into them.”</p>
<p>A long pause, then: “I thought you hated them. I thought it was worse.”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry I didn’t look at them immediately. But we were very busy this morning. You’d gone to sleep by the time I was able to look at them or I would have thanked you sooner.”</p>
<p>“This morning? No.” Shaking his head. “It was much longer. I don’t... What are the drawings?”</p>
<p>“Some drawings of me, that you must have made last night. You’ve been asleep for most of today, and dreaming. That may be why it seems longer. You have vivid dreams.”</p>
<p>Another long pause. “You liked them?”</p>
<p>“Yes, very much. No one has ever done that for me before.”</p>
<p>Angel sat up away from the wall, exhaustion suddenly gone. He reached out towards Wesley’s arm, though Gunn couldn’t see if he touched. “Will you stay?”</p>
<p>“I can stay and read. For a while. Is there anything you’d particularly like to read?” Angel nodded and pointed, and Wesley went to get the book and then sat down next to Angel – right next to him, closer than usual – and Gunn moved away from the door and lay on the couch and read the paper.</p>
<p>When Wesley got up to leave, Angel got to his feet too, which was unusual. He walked with Wesley to the door, not like he was showing him out, but like he couldn’t bear yet for him to leave. To Gunn it was obvious: the angle of his head, the tension in his arm, the way he kept looking Wesley up and down – he needed to put his arms around Wesley. And Wesley realised; he was being too brisk, too oblivious, almost like this was the end of a meeting with a client. He’d been like that with Gunn, after the Mexican meal.</p>
<p>“Go ahead, Wes. It’s OK.” Gunn didn’t raise his voice, spoke like Wesley was sitting next to him, and for a few seconds he wondered if Wesley had heard. But then Wesley turned to face Angel and stepped forward, and Gunn looked away from the screen. He heard Angel sigh, then murmurings from each: questions, and discouraging answers. Ten seconds, twenty at most, and then Wesley was closing and locking the door.</p>
<p>“Did he say why he’d been such an asshole yesterday? Did he know?”</p>
<p>“Not really. I think... he thought I wouldn’t mind. That he’d made jokes like that before and I’d joined in. But he shouldn’t forget now.”</p>
<p>Wesley wanted music, put on one of his classical CDs, but just at background level; Gunn had heard it before and liked it, but not enough to ask what it was. When Wesley finally sat down – after clearing away beer bottles, emptying the dishwasher, tidying the kitchen and fetching more beer – Gunn said, “Does he still have those dreams? About waking up with you next to him?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. Maybe not recently. He still knows he had them. But of course he couldn’t tell you when.”</p>
<p>“Was he confused by me being here? Obviously knowing?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “Didn’t seem to notice.” He closed his head and leaned his head back.</p>
<p>“You’re tired?”</p>
<p>A long sigh. Wesley opened his eyes and looked down at his beer. “It’s hard work. Not knowing who he’ll be next. I suppose afterwards it seems obvious but...” Eyes closed again. “I never seem to learn what to expect and it can’t be good for him when I let myself be surprised.”</p>
<p>Gunn put his hand on Wesley’s wrist, fingertips just touching the bottle. “You know you just have to say. You need to get away. San Diego. Wherever. Any time. This weekend coming?”</p>
<p>A pause, then Wesley looked at Gunn, very serious, and then he smiled and shook his head. “It’s just tonight. Because of this weekend. If he’s easier by tomorrow then by next weekend I’ll be complaining that he’s so predictable. About having to have the same conversation with him ten times.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>On Tuesday Gunn started to think about what he’d do on Thursday evening, when he’d promised he’d get out of the apartment so Angel could have his “physical contact”. Grouw and Piriti had said on Saturday that they probably wouldn’t be going to Caritas, not for a while – didn’t want to deal with the questions, for one thing. Gunn called Grouw on Tuesday to check and it was definite, but they were digging on Saturday, or meeting at the nest anyway, and then digging if they couldn’t agree on something else to do.</p>
<p>Gunn didn’t want to go to Caritas on his own. He wanted company – people rubbin’ off each other, talking shit for two, three hours. The crew. Maybe the crew and a movie. He’d call, see who was up for “Planet of the Apes”.</p>
<p>They’d already done “Planet of the Apes”, but George said he’d ask around about “Rush Hour 2” or “Akira”, and when Gunn turned up at the base on Thursday, the group had settled at six people, and on “Akira”. Over Mexican in Jefferson afterwards, they decided on “Rush Hour 2” for next Thursday.</p>
<p>Seemed like it was Gunn’s week for being told other people’s decisions. He turned up at the nest with suggestions ready for finding a video arcade, or going exploring in some of the tunnels, maybe finding somewhere down there that would be a new place indoors for them to hang out. But Grouw and Piriti were doing a tour that evening – their first together, and they knew it might be their last – so now they didn’t want to do anything new, just stick with the routine and slowly psych themselves up.</p>
<p>Piriti had found their customer on Thursday night, when he’d actually been out working on closing down the business by taking leaflets out of the hotels; he hadn’t told Grouw that he was going to do that, but apparently neither of them had a problem with that now.</p>
<p>“So I came out of the Marina Hotel – at Torrance and Victor – and I dumped the leaflets in the nearest trash bin. He saw me do it, wondered why I was so down – he’s an empath demon, said he’d seen that about me a block away – and he took one out of the trash to see, thought it might be we’d had to cancel a gig or something. Read what he needed in a few seconds and he caught up with me just before I got to the Wilderness Hotel. It’s him and this human friend of his. Hank. In town for a couple of weeks lookin’ to set up a new business. Dunno what sort yet.” Piriti laughed. “They want a tour that’s half the Chachaspe one and half the Hull one. He’d got one of the Chachaspe leaflets, but then he was asking about the human driver, so I told him about the whole setup. He called Hank and then we called Grouw, and we booked it right there. Should be fun.”</p>
<p>“That’s cool.” Gunn grinned. “So when’s Grouw’s night for trashing your leaflets?”</p>
<p>The demons both laughed, then shook their heads, and Piriti said, “We’ll see how it goes tonight.”</p>
<p>When they took a break for soda and donuts, Gunn said, “Y’know, Wesley was trying to save an empath demon when he had the fight with the Kungai. The fight where he lost his arm. The Kungai was after the demon’s empath powers. Going to steal them. Wesley’d tracked them both from San Antonio. He thinks the empath got away. Looked like the Kungai was still on the hunt when it attacked Wesley. And Angel killed it and saved Wesley, so...” He shrugged.</p>
<p>The boys were shocked and impressed, asked more about Wesley and Angel, then wondered how many empath demons there were, what were the chances that Barney knew the demon that Wesley and Angel had saved.</p>
<p>Barney was the exact same demon that Wesley and Angel had saved. Piriti had wanted to call as soon as they found out, but that would have been weird and kinda rude in the middle of the tour, and it was past two when they finished; he knew it was still too early when he did call (8.30 on Sunday morning), but he just couldn’t wait and he knew Wesley would want to know. Well, it was early if you didn’t have a training routine: Gunn and Wesley were having breakfast in a diner in Venice. Gunn passed the phone to Wesley and heard Piriti tell the story again to Wesley, in exactly the same way.</p>
<p>Wesley was uncomfortable, though Piriti probably thought he was just being English. He didn’t say much beyond, “Goodness. That is a remarkable coincidence,” and, “Well, that’s very thoughtful of him. Yes, I’ll remember that for when he calls.”</p>
<p>Gunn waited until they had refills of coffee before he said, “What’s he wanna do? The empath demon?”</p>
<p>“Take me out for a meal.” Wesley shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about what happened. I’m glad for him. Of course. But I don’t what to hear... what he saw. Of what happened.”</p>
<p>Gunn was definite. “He won’t. Empath demon, he’ll pick that up ‘fore you’ve even parked the car. You c’n talk about the boys, the tours. Caritas. Y’know. Grouw’s sister ‘n’ the duals... Course he can’t leave town without thankin’ you, can he?”</p>
<p>“I know. But I don’t need it. That’s not why I...” A shrug, and he’d suddenly accepted. “I’ve never met an empath demon. I wonder what I’d ask. Piriti found him good company, anyway. He said that, if that was the last tour, then it was the perfect one to end with.” Just what Grouw had been hoping for. Thank you, Barney.</p>
<p>Barney called about two hours later. He was leaving L.A. on Wednesday. Was Wesley free on any of the evenings before then? Wesley checked with Gunn and agreed on that evening, and suggested a mid-range restaurant that he’d heard about through the survey.</p>
<p>He wore his suit, and he looked so controlled, so English. And yes, he was, but there was more, and had anyone but Gunn ever worked out how much more? Gunn helped him with his tie, enjoying all the details of smoothing him down, while getting half-hard from thoughts of mussing him up; he loved the feel of Wesley in a fresh shirt, just loved it.</p>
<p>Wesley and Barney did talk about the boys and the tours and Caritas, but mostly they talked about the survey. Piriti had mentioned the survey to Barney, along with the committees and all of the meetings. Barney was fascinated by the organisation, how Wesley had got L.A.’s demons to co-operate, and then by all the politics with the review board, how Wesley’s designs (and Gunn’s) were working out in practice. He was interested for practical reasons since an important part of his business involved selling a line of specially-processed shellfish products to Kekulei demons, and it would be a big help to know the likely market and the best locations. He didn’t have time on this visit to make the application to the review board, so for now he was just hoping for some tips on how the board worked so he could avoid making a stupid mistake when the time came. Wesley was happy to explain, and the more Barney heard, the more he wanted to know, now just out of curiosity – which was a big thing with him, the reason he’d followed Piriti and then booked the tour.</p>
<p>Of course Wesley offered to help Barney with the application for the board, but then when he got home he decided he might as well spare Barney that extra trip from New Orleans. He got the information about Kekulei demons from the database, broken down by district, indications of income, mode of transport, and internet use, and added a note to the printout saying what he’d picked up in passing about favourite hangouts (for food, sports, grooming, worship...), and what Kekulei demons were likely to read. He dropped the information off at Barney’s hotel the next day, just leaving it at the desk and not asking if Barney was in; Wesley already knew how Barney expressed thanks (at exactly the right time, in exactly the right amount), and it was enough for Wesley to imagine.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Late on Thursday morning, while Wesley was in talking to Angel, Gunn took a call for Wyndham Gunn from Swift, one of the community leaders on the review board. She needed someone who could deal easily with any type of human, to help investigate the murders of a family of Kekulei demons (parents and eldest daughter). The bodies had been found in a storm-drain in Burbank, and the three had last been seen alive leaving a church in Hollywood Hills on Monday night, eight miles away. They had all been bound hand and foot, and their throats had been cut lengthwise and the spiral larynx had been removed from each of them – not as a trophy, Swift thought, but as the entire object of the murders. The larynx of the Kekulei demon, if held suspended and played with ice-cold air, produced sounds that could make an emotion condense out of the air, so it could be collected and transported and used as a weapon. With one larynx only, the playing required great skill to produce the required emotion, but if more larynxes were added – and especially if their tones were related – then the necessary level of skill dropped sharply.</p>
<p>Swift wanted Gunn and Wesley to speak to any humans they knew who might have heard any talk (no matter how vague), about Kekulei demons or about strange musical instruments or about artificial emotions. Or about hiring a van or parking a van or anything at all about a van, because the murderers must have had some way of getting the three Kekulei demons out of sight in less than a minute.</p>
<p>Wesley had put Barney’s card in the index box on his desk; Gunn would have known it was there even if he hadn’t watched Wesley emptying his pockets on Sunday night. Gunn dialled the number, and the number did not exist. He tried again, but no, he had dialled it properly the first time. He had to tell Wesley. Now. Wesley wouldn’t want to be left talking about dreams with Angel while this was happening out in the world.</p>
<p>“Wes? You need to come here. There’s something... You need to come here.”</p>
<p>Wesley came out prepared for bad news, but not nearly prepared enough. He clutched at his throat, seemed to be struggling to breathe, and his voice was thin, hardly recognisable, when he asked which church. Gunn told the story quickly, and then found nothing, nothing to say, hardly anything to think except, “No. Please, no.” Wesley had closed his eyes after Gunn had nodded towards the index box, and when Gunn finished speaking they were still closed, and the shudders were getting more violent and more random.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t be enough just to step forward and hold him, probably close him in worse with his hand still up at his throat and his lungs working like he was trying to breath concrete. But get behind him, hold him from behind... Be able to help him breathe. Be like... supporting him from the inside. Reminding him of what he already knew about how to get through this.</p>
<p>Gunn had reached Wesley’s side, was turning, about to reach out, when Wesley suddenly moved away, almost at a run, for the desk. Gunn heard him pull another card from the index box, and then he was dialing.</p>
<p>“Swift, it’s Wesley Wyndham-Pryce.” His voice sounded normal. Urgent, but normal. “Yes, I think I know who did it. There’s an empath demon who calls himself Barney. He was staying in Hawthorne, at the Ocean Hotel on Rosencrans and Ramona. That was on Monday.” A pause. “Yes, very little chance, I know. But in case we do get a lead there, can we be ready to –” Another pause. “I think he has at least one accomplice. The one I know of is human. So, yes, as many as you can. A block away? The street behind the hotel? Charles and I can bring a net. And restraints.” Gunn was heading for the chest in the closet. “Yes, and a range of weapons. Twenty minutes.” A brief pause and then Wesley’s voice was suddenly thin again, terrible. “No. No. You don’t – I’ll... I’ll... When there’s time.” A deep, shuddering breath, and then he was in charge again. “Twenty minutes. As many as you can.”</p>
<p>Wesley and Gunn were the ones who went in to ask for Barney at the desk, with Gunn carrying the crossbow and their swords in a sportsbag. The six demons (three of them Kekulei demons) waited around the corner.</p>
<p>Barney had checked out on Monday, though he’d been booked in for another week. Before midday he’d gone, maybe an hour after he’d got Wesley’s envelope. Come down and said he was checking out, and his human friend already out there in the van, waiting to pick him up. (A blue cargo van. Maybe a Ford. Maybe a Chevy.) No mention of where he was going. The address in the register was the same as the one on the card. The room had been cleaned several times since Monday, there was a couple of Hmba sisters in it right now – and what the hell was this, anyway? Wesley stepped out into the street and called for the demons, and Swift did most of the talking after that.</p>
<p>They searched the room, looked under everything, behind everything, took the notepad, the magazine, the pack of brochures, in case there was something tucked away, some impression made of a message taken, a number.</p>
<p>Nothing.</p>
<p>On the stairs on the way down to the lobby, Swift said to Wesley, “Who told you about this empath demon? Take us to him and we’ll see what else he knows.”</p>
<p>Wesley’s voice was perfectly steady, clear enough to reach Gunn at the very back of the group, two flights up. “No one told me. I already knew. I was the person who told the empath whereabouts in L.A. he could find Kekulei demons.”</p>
<p>A frozen silence for maybe three seconds, with Gunn trying to push past down the stairs, desperate to get to Wesley. Then a roar, and a rush that knocked Gunn off his feet, and Wesley was crushed against the wall on the next landing, being promised death in four different languages. Gunn scrambled for his bag and hauled out his sword, and prayed that he could take down three of them while he had the advantage of surprise. And would Wesley even fight? Was he on his own?</p>
<p>“Wait!” Swift, from just around the corner, out of Gunn’s sight. “We have to ask him. While he can still talk.” They backed off, leaving just Swift with a hold on his arm and a Kekulei demon holding fast on his shoulder.</p>
<p>Gunn was still up on the stairs, still poised to jump down swinging, and he could see Wesley now, over their heads. Wesley was crying. Not noisy, not pleading, not out of fear. But quiet, hopeless. Heartbroken.</p>
<p>Unbearable. And Gunn could do nothing. He could do nothing. He couldn’t change what Wesley had done.</p>
<p>“So why? Why did you tell him?”</p>
<p>“He’d heard about the survey. He invited me out for a meal on Sunday night. He said that he was going to open a business in L.A. With Kekulei demons as the main customers. And he’d be back in L.A. in a month, to start the process of applying to the review board. He asked me about the board, what he should expect. He didn’t ask me if I had a copy of the database, if I could give him the information directly. But when I got home I printed it out. And I added what I’d heard about the main meeting-places, including churches. And I gave addresses, including the one in Hollywood Hills. I brought the list here on Monday morning and I left it at the desk.”</p>
<p>Another eruption. The Kekulei demon had dug his claws under Wesley’s padding, and had dragged it – with the shirt – half-off Wesley’s shoulder. Wesley didn’t seem to notice, had his eyes fixed on Swift.</p>
<p>“For a meal? You came with all those speeches about procedures and safeguards, and all the time you’ll sell it for a meal?”</p>
<p>Now Wesley reacted, shaking his head. “No. No. I thought he was safe. I think... I think... Because I’d helped him before.”</p>
<p>“Before? To find Kekulei demons? When? What have you done?”</p>
<p>Gunn took a step down the stairs. “Wesley saved his life two years ago. When he was being hunted by a Kungai. The Kungai took Wesley’s arm and Wesley nearly died. But the empath got away. The meal was to thank Wesley. That’s what he said. They’d never even met when Wesley was tracking the Kungai. But he... He’s an empath. I think he said all the right things to make Wesley feel like he knew him. Like they really had a history.”</p>
<p>The demons looked at one another, then one of the Kekulei demons said slowly, “Are we sure it’s him? That he’s the one who did it?”</p>
<p>The Kekulei demon at Wesley’s shoulder shrugged, then stepped back and let go. “The van. The way he took off after seeing the list. All the lies. You know empaths. You know how they operate. This one smells of hunter. He’s done this before. Maybe he tried to do it to that Kungai.”</p>
<p>The others nodded, and Swift released her hold on Wesley’s arm. “So we start looking for an empath demon. Get a description from him.” A nod towards Wesley. “And carry on looking for the empath’s customer or any sign that he’s using the larynxes himself.”</p>
<p>Gunn said, “We can do that. On the human side. Like you asked before.”</p>
<p>They looked at him. After a couple of seconds Swift (and only Swift) took a glance at Wesley, and then she said to Gunn, “Yes. Do that. But first you drive home and we’ll follow with him. I want to see where you live before I let you go.”</p>
<p>“Wes?” Gunn could see Swift’s point, but this wasn’t a decision he could make. Not when it might involve Angel.</p>
<p>“You can see us to the door of the apartment. You can see us open it but you can’t come inside.”</p>
<p>A pause, then she nodded, not looking at Wesley, and led the way down to the lobby. They put Wesley in the back seat of Swift’s car, with the largest Kekulei demon guarding him, and they had another Kekulei demon in with Gunn. Gunn’s ride was in complete silence, and from what he could see in the rearview, so was Wesley’s.</p>
<p>Angel was lying quietly on the mattress, made no sound even at the new voices, and you couldn’t see the monitor from the corridor. The demons didn’t try to enter the apartment: one look at the desk and the bookcases and anyone could see that this was where Wesley lived. They left almost immediately, after Swift had given Gunn orders to call in at midnight to report what he and Wesley had done and what they were planning to do next.</p>
<p>Wesley and Gunn started by looking in Wesley’s books for descriptions of the spell for capturing emotions, in case there were any details that might give them more leads. They found three descriptions, all much the same, all with illustrations of a larynx held in the middle of a cage, and the first with an illustration of Kekulei demon. Wesley started crying again as he read the first description, but it was almost like he didn’t know that he was doing it: he just went on talking through it, making notes, having ideas.</p>
<p>One idea was to call Lilah Morgan – because if the empath demon did have a customer, it would have to be someone very, very rich – and Wesley did that next and left such a brief, controlled message on her voice-mail that she’d think it was just another case.</p>
<p>They needed descriptions of Barney and Hank (yes, they’d call them that, until they knew better). Wesley found a good picture of an empath demon and made copies. He couldn’t say much about Barney except how he’d dressed (aggressively casual, but maybe that was just another lie, shrugged off minutes later). Gunn called Grouw and asked for a description of Hank, anything he or Barney might have said about places they knew, things they did. “Tell you later, OK?” And he’d have to. He’d have to tell Piriti, too. Tomorrow. Or... Or... After they’d found Barney, once they knew who he really was.</p>
<p>They agreed that Wesley would take the bookstores and the magic-users, Gunn would take the internet and the street, they’d share out any others as they thought of them, and they’d call in every hour.</p>
<p>Gunn found nothing, and not many people who’d care, either. He soon stopped mentioning the murders, asked mostly about Hank and the van, and about things from the spell. He would probably have checked with the crew anyway, but having to drop out of the movie trip moved them a few places up his list; they assumed he was working on one of Angel’s tip-offs and wanted to be in on the fight, but Gunn said it had to be small this time, really low-key.</p>
<p>Wesley did better with his bookstores, discovering that Barney was a regular in L.A., seemed to come about once a year, which meant he might come back. He’d bought one book this time, on Tuesday last week: a 1983 Radnor, for $45 cash. It was a solid general reference, Wesley had twenty like it. Barney had known what he was looking for, had seemed pleased to find it, but didn’t want to go on the mailing list, didn’t want help or suggestions. No one could remember exactly what he’d bought in other years, but they agreed that he acted like a professional, on a routine check for something new or improved to make his life easier. The stores said they’d look through their sales records, get back to Wesley if they remembered what Barney had bought. They hadn’t heard anything about Kekulei demons or about the spell.</p>
<p>Wesley got the idea of talking to their competitors in the demon-expert business, and he and Gunn met back at the apartment to look up names and numbers. And what about some of the weirdos that they’d met through cases and visions? Like those demon-worshipping twins. Anyone who saw demons as an “opportunity”, they should put on their list.</p>
<p>They finished making the calls around eight. They’d talked to about half of the names on their list (got nothing), and for the others Gunn would keep trying the no-answers, and they’d follow up the messages in the morning. It was late enough now for Wesley to start making his visits to the magic-users, but Gunn had ordered Chinese and he made Wesley wait until it arrived and then got him to eat – not much but something. They hadn’t talked yet about what had happened, or not about their part in it. Maybe if they found enough new calls to make, new people to see, they still wouldn’t have talked a week from now.</p>
<p>Gunn spent the evening searching online, harder and stranger than he’d ever searched before. Angel was unsettled, probably just from the tone of their voices, because how would he make sense of the words? “Church”, “family”, “van”, “hotel”. They only made sense in the world beyond the window, which didn’t exist for Angel. He’d have nightmares later, Gunn was sure, with a strong chance he’d wake up as Angelus.</p>
<p>Wesley called in near midnight, when he got done with the first magic-user (the same guy who’d helped them with the zombie cops). He’d found nothing directly about Barney or the Kekulei demons, but maybe something about the Kungai: a rumour from a year or more back, about someone killed by a stab from a Kungai’s Tak horn, with the body just collapsed like nothing but a Tak horn could do, and with no Kungai within a thousand miles. When Wesley had been tracking the Kungai, he’d been following a trail of mutilations across three states. Now it was looking like that was all Barney’s work, starting with the Kungai. Wesley had made a list of the mutilations, with places and dates, and he read it out and Gunn copied it all down.</p>
<p>Wesley had three more magic-users to visit, and he didn’t know when he would be home. He wouldn’t call in again, or not unless he needed Gunn’s help. Gunn called Swift exactly at midnight and told her about the bookstores and the (possible) trail of mutilations, and she said that she had put together a similar picture, also by following the clue of the Kungai. The empath didn’t normally hunt in L.A., they were fairly sure. So when he came to L.A. it was for another reason. If they could work out the reason, that might be one way to find him. Another would be to look outside L.A. for the signs of his hunting, try to follow his path backwards. They’d already started to send the word out, but Wesley’s list would help.</p>
<p>Swift wasn’t exactly friendly (and who would be, when running a murder investigation?), but she wasn’t angry either; she treated Gunn like a person, with information and opinions going both ways. They arranged that Gunn would call in at six the next evening, and Swift was about to hang up when Gunn said quickly, “C’n I ask you something? How many people know now what Wesley did? Where we live. What’re we lookin’ at in terms of payback?”</p>
<p>A brief pause, then: “What he did... We’ll tell anyone who asks. Or needs to know. And then tell them that he came to us as soon as he knew. We could have made the same mistake with the review board, if the empath ever really was planning on making that application. No one’s thinking of payback.”</p>
<p>“What about the Kekulei demons? They gotta want someone.”</p>
<p>“They want the people who did it.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but if you don’t find ‘em...? Wesley’d be next, right?”</p>
<p>A sigh that sounded like agreement. “We’ll try to get them... I’ll warn you. If the mood starts to change, I’ll call you and I’ll warn you that you should get out of town. And I’ll tell you when it’s safe to come back.”</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t come home that night, and he didn’t call in. He’d made it very clear to Gunn the last time that magic-users were precious little pricks who’d take any excuse to get offended – like a visitor taking a phone call from a boyfriend who was still worried about Kekulei demons and payback. Yeah, Swift had meant what she said, she would warn Gunn, but Gunn knew it would only take one Kekulei going after Wesley, just one who hadn’t read the memo, hadn’t got with Swift’s program.</p>
<p>But Wesley would have told the magic-user that this was about murder. Cold-blooded, planned, probably for money. You let up on your dignity when life got real, didn’t you? So if Wesley’s boyfriend got worried enough to have to call… Just one call, with maybe ten words. You’d understand, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t get so offended you’d tell Wesley to leave. But they might be in the middle of a spell. Five seconds from getting a fix on Barney. Needing total concentration. And maybe no second chance.</p>
<p>Gunn held out until nearly four, and then he decided that it couldn’t, it just couldn’t, take four hours to ask three magic-users a few simple questions about Tak horns and emotions in bottles. Something else had happened to Wesley, and Gunn had to know where he was.</p>
<p>Wesley’s phone was switched off. Which had to mean a spell, right? And those could take hours. So... OK. Probably he was OK. Nothing Gunn could do, except try again in an hour. Should get some sleep: might be his last chance in days. Angel was quiet now, or quiet enough to sleep through. Angelus had been and gone, and he’d been easy to ignore this time; no different, but suddenly irrelevant.</p>
<p>Gunn left the lights on and the door to the bedroom half-open, and lay down on the bed with just his shoes kicked-off. He closed his eyes and he saw the demons surging down the stairs towards Wesley. And he tried to think “stupid”, and “brave”, and “honourable” and he tried not to think “suicidal”.</p>
<p>He’d call Grouw at midday – Oh, God, training in the evening. They’d have to cancel, too dangerous with them both so strung out. Could Grouw get a message to his sister in time? Or Gunn could just meet the duals at the portal and drive them straight to a bar.</p>
<p>But Grouw and Piriti? He’d tell them tomorrow before they heard it somewhere else. Tell them what Swift had said about payback: that Wesley would be OK. A mistake. A mistake that anyone could have made.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>When he woke it was past nine and Wesley still wasn’t back. Angel was awake and deep in hell – first time in months, so those were some vibes he’d picked up – and he didn’t know Gunn at all, trembled all the time he was drinking, the beaker knocking against his teeth.</p>
<p>Gunn made coffee for two, and his search for breakfast found only the fortune cookies from last night. He threw the papers away without reading them, not in any mood to play the game of looking for good news, matching up silly hints with silly hopes. There was nothing to hope for here. Not really. Yeah, they might find Barney, put a stop to his hunting, but this wasn’t a mistake that could be put right. Whatever the fortunes might have to say, they were too late by nearly a week.</p>
<p>And never mind the fortune cookies, what about a vision? What sort of “Powers” would know about the Kungai and miss out on Barney? Just one drawing of Barney with a knife. Or not even a drawing: Angelus saying “The empath demon. He’s killing them! He’s cutting their throats.” Any time before Sunday evening, and that would have been enough.</p>
<p>But the Powers didn’t save demons. And look at Angel, at what serving them had done to Angel. They didn’t care. They saved Wesley and so he was theirs, and that was all they’d ever thought about him.</p>
<p>Gunn called Grouw, arranged to meet him during his lunch-break, and got the number of Piriti’s pager. Grouw should be able to send a message to his sister over lunch, but he couldn’t guarantee that she’d get it in time to pass it on.</p>
<p>Wesley called at ten, on his way to a meeting with Lilah Morgan. He’d shown the list of mutilations to the other magic-users and got more rumours, all pointing to the idea of some rich customer, maybe rich enough to leave no trace of himself in the real world. Would Lilah give up a client? One way to find out.</p>
<p>“So you were talkin’ rumours all night? These guys know when you usually sleep?”</p>
<p>“Ellison gave me – I don’t know. There was... time.”</p>
<p>Jeez, he sounded like Angel. “Wes. I think you’re too tired to be driving.” Or too stoned. “Where are you?”</p>
<p>“No. No, I don’t need to sleep. I’m not tired. I’ve got a meeting.”</p>
<p>“Well. Be careful. You know you can leave the car at the library. Get a cab home. You’re comin’ home after, right?”</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t know. Lilah might give him some new leads. They couldn’t wait. They couldn’t give Barney more time.</p>
<p>“Wes. You have to allow some room. Remember the dumpster?” No reply, and Gunn sighed to himself and closed his eyes for a few seconds. Then he shrugged and: “I’ve cancelled the training for this evening. Asked Grouw to get a message to the duals.”</p>
<p>“Oh. Yes. Yes, they wouldn’t – Of course.” Slurred, vague, like he was only half-there. He shouldn’t be driving. He definitely shouldn’t be talking. Gunn got off the line in just a few words, then went straight down to the truck and drove to the library. He’d planned on staking out the corridor outside the study carrels, but he got lucky and found Wesley’s car while he was looking for somewhere to park; and he sat in the driver’s seat and used the time to follow up the no-answers and left-messages from the day before.</p>
<p>Piriti returned Gunn’s page at around eleven, and Gunn arranged to pick him up at a quarter of one, and they’d meet Grouw near his work, and Gunn would tell them both some bad news. No, not about Matt. No, no, he wouldn’t be able to help them with the tours now, but that wasn’t it. No, he couldn’t say now, but it was bad.</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t see Gunn waiting in the car. Looked like it was taking Wesley all of his concentration just to deal with his keys. When Gunn opened the door, Wesley cried out – in fear, open fear – and jumped back, slamming into the next car and dropping his keys.</p>
<p>“Charles! Charles. You were at home. What are you doing?”</p>
<p>Gunn was picking up the keys and using them to lock the car. “I’m taking you home. If you’d heard yourself on the phone... You’re not fit to drive.” He put his hand on Wesley’s arm and started leading him towards the truck. Wesley resisted, not fighting Gunn exactly, but acting desperate to get back to the car.</p>
<p>“No. I have to – I can’t –”</p>
<p>Gunn got very firm, controlled him with an arm around his waist that kept Wesley’s arm clamped between their bodies. “You need to see a mirror. You’re going home. Christ, didn’t Lilah offer to call you a cab? Didn’t she say anything?”</p>
<p>“She said... she doesn’t know.” Wesley was hardly struggling at all now. Given up, or distracted.</p>
<p>“Hadn’t even heard the rumours?” Wesley shook his head. “So you rest now, Wes. Need you thinking straight. That’s what’s important now: get you ready to work out our next lead.”</p>
<p>Wesley let Gunn lead him into the bedroom, let Gunn undress him and take his glasses off, and ease him under the covers. He was shutting down, withdrawing somewhere; he’d be asleep in minutes.</p>
<p>“Have you eaten? I mean real food.” A shake of the head, eyes half-closed. “I’ll get you... Will you drink a glass of milk?” A pause, then a grunt that wasn’t a no. Gunn thought Wesley would probably be asleep when he got back from the kitchen, but he’d stayed awake and he pushed himself up to sitting when Gunn told him to – very slowly, all very slowly – and he took the glass and he drank.</p>
<p>Three mouthfuls, with his eyes drifting shut again, then suddenly: “Angel!” Urgent, panicked, thrusting the glass at Gunn and scrabbling to get out of bed.</p>
<p>Gunn pushed him back with a hand on his shoulder. “Angel’s fine. I fed him this morning, same as usual. There’s nothing to worry about. Here. You just need to finish this.” He put the glass in Wesley’s hand.</p>
<p>“What did you tell him?” Apprehensive. Making no move to drink.</p>
<p>“He was in hell, Wes. I told him to drink.”</p>
<p>“That’s –” A ragged sigh. “He never questioned about the Kungai. What had happened. He just accepted what I told him.”</p>
<p>At the beginning. Wesley was back at the beginning. “What he’d seen. Same as you did.”</p>
<p>“But he knew I couldn’t be – He’d seen what I – He felt sorry for me. He shouldn’t have felt sorry for me. He should have made me...”</p>
<p>“Wes. Don’t do this. You think he’d blame you if he knew? Barney... Barney’s been doin’ this for a long time. He gets away with it because... he knows that normal people can’t imagine what he does. How he thinks. Must’ve got away with it with hundreds of people. Until now. Until you. When you put your life on the line to stop him. That’s what Angel would see. If he knew.”</p>
<p>But Wesley was just shaking his head. He pushed the glass towards Gunn’s hand. “I don’t want this.”</p>
<p>Gunn put the glass on the nightstand then took Wesley’s hand. “Will you sleep? You look – You’d scare Angelus.” No, Angelus would just want to fuck him. Drink him and fuck him. But he’d scare Angel and he scared Gunn.</p>
<p>The stubble. How did it make him look so tough and so breakable, both at the same time? Gunn had never worked it out, not in a year, it still grabbed him, the same as that first morning. And now... There was something in Wesley’s eyes that reminded Gunn of Angel, how Angel always looked when he woke in the gag and chains. The despair, the pleading. Trapped, with no possible place to run. But Angel would be frantic with fear while Wesley... Wesley was somewhere even worse, held in pure pain.</p>
<p>“I –” Wesley swallowed. “What will you do?”</p>
<p>“I’m still makin’ the calls. When that’s done I’ll try the streets again. See how it looks now we know more.”</p>
<p>Wesley was nodding. “Swift. What have they found? Would she tell you?”</p>
<p>Gunn gave Wesley most of his conversation with Swift, not including his question at the end about payback. Wesley was calming down, forgetting Angel, and after a certain point his exhaustion seemed to fall on him: his eyes started to flutter closed, and by the end of Gunn’s next sentence he was asleep, still sitting up from when he’d been drinking. Gunn half-lifted him, got him lying flat, then bent over him and kissed him, then, against his cheek, in a whisper: “We’ll get through this. You’ll see. No one’ll blame you, no one who knows.”</p>
<p>Grouw was waiting outside the garage, and he’d already sent the message to his sister. Gunn drove to a quiet street, parked, and then turned in his seat and went straight in and told them, starting with the meal and Barney asking about the survey. They were puzzled, listening with a “yeah, so?” look, and then Gunn got to the call from Swift. Piriti started to gag when Gunn was describing the spell, and Grouw got the door open in time and hauled him out so he threw up into the street. Gunn got water and a cloth, expecting that Piriti would need minutes to recover, but he just rinsed his mouth out once, looked up at Gunn, and said, “Why? For... Power?”</p>
<p>“For money. Or that’s how it looks.” Gunn told them about the bookstores and the Tak horn and the trail of mutilations, and then Grouw asked how Gunn had told Swift all this without telling her everything about Wesley, and Gunn was back to Thursday morning. He told the rest right through, and with just the fact and none of the feelings, it was much quicker than he’d thought – because they’d found almost nothing.</p>
<p>Piriti said he’d call Swift, tell her about the tour. He borrowed Gunn’s phone, and Swift told him to come to her office immediately, so Gunn started the truck.</p>
<p>“You told her like it was just you. We should both go.”</p>
<p>Piriti shook his head. “You have work. I’ll give her your number if she asks for it. You know I talked to him more.”</p>
<p>Piriti said he’d get a cab home, no need for Gunn to come back for him. Swift’s address was about five miles from where Grouw worked. Silence for the first mile, then Grouw said, “Why’d he do it? Wesley. Give the empath all that. I know he bent the rules for us, when we were starting the tours, but... When they were his rules?”</p>
<p>Gunn sighed. “I don’t know. He’s – I can’t ask him yet. But... When you’ve saved someone. Lost as much as he did to do it. You – I guess he had this picture in his mind of who he’d saved. How the guy’d been worth it. Maybe Barney picked up on that. Played to it. He sure played it right. Wes told me what he was doing. When he got home and went to the computer. He told me all about the meal. And I never said, ‘Woah! This guy’s workin’ a con. He’s set you up for this.’ Because I didn’t think it. He sounded... like a regular guy.”</p>
<p>Grouw nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah. That’s how he acted. With us. Is it –” He swallowed. “What’s worse? If he’s a monster who knows how to fake it? When he needs to fool people. Or if he is a regular guy? Who can still do these things and... shrug them off like it doesn’t matter.”</p>
<p>“Oh, man. It’s all bad.”</p>
<p>Silence again, until they got to the garage. Grouw was about to open the door, then paused and turned to look at Gunn. “How’s Wesley? How’s he dealing?”</p>
<p>Gunn just shook his head, over and over.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>Gunn set his jaw, gave a fraction of a shrug. “Mistake. s’a mistake.”</p>
<p>Grouw nodded, then left without looking back.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Gunn wanted to get back to Wesley. He needed to get into their bed, press himself along Wesley’s back – like he’d been about to, a day ago now – and hold Wesley tight. If he held him right, he’d be able to make things better. He’d smooth down Wesley’s pain. The worst of it, the sharpest edges. Breathe it into himself and make it melt away into nothing. And when Wesley woke up (gradually, peacefully), and then turned in Gunn’s arms to see him, that look would be gone. Just normal guilt, normal grief. Not that terrible despair.</p>
<p>But he’d told Wesley he’d be checking the streets again. Asking about the Tak horn and the other mutilations. And he should because there was a chance. He didn’t need to sleep. Yes, half his thoughts were about wanting to hold Wesley, but that still left him enough that he could work. Holding Wesley would have to wait.</p>
<p>Gunn was home by four; taken a third the time of yesterday, because no one had anything new to say. Wesley was having a nightmare, as bad as one of Angel’s, and Angel was huddled in his corner, curled tight, with his arms wrapped around his head trying to hide from the sounds.</p>
<p>Wesley let out a cry like a scream when Gunn was waking him, and then lay gasping, looking shocked and exhausted. But he recovered quite quickly, especially once he had his hand on Gunn’s arm, holding tight, steadying. He looked better. “I was dreaming...” He swallowed and sighed. “Charles. You’re dressed already? What time is it?”</p>
<p>“Around four. I just got in. You don’t have to get up, just tell me when you’ll want dinner. What you’d like.”</p>
<p>Wesley wasn’t recovered, he’d just forgotten what had happened; for those first few seconds he’d thought it was a normal day. Gunn saw the memories slam into him, and then Wesley was pushing Gunn away and hurrying to get out of bed.</p>
<p>Gunn got him to shower and shave, and he made tea while Wesley was getting washed and dressed. Wesley sat at his desk and Gunn on the arm of the couch, and they talked over what they could do next. Wesley thought Hank might live in L.A.; he definitely hadn’t been on the trail with the Kungai, so maybe he was just Barney’s contact for whatever kept bringing him to L.A. Not much to go on, though, apart from “blue van”. And the best chance of finding him would be if some demon had seen him, and Swift was handling the demon side of the investigation so there was nothing for Gunn or Wesley to do. Also, apart from the bookstores, they’d seen no sign of Barney having dealings with humans, so, again, all the leads they might try next were really with Swift. All they could probably do was look for ideas and pass them on. Wesley would research the different demons who’d been mutilated, see if he could find any patterns, and Gunn would look for any mention of them online: if he knew how the attacks had been reported, then he might be able to recognise others.</p>
<p>Wesley made more tea and Gunn made them both a sandwich, and then they settled down to work. The urgency was gone now, it felt almost like working on a normal case; they made comments and asked questions in their normal tones, and Wesley was the one who started reading out items that couldn’t really be relevant, but were interesting enough to share with Gunn.</p>
<p>There was a scratching sound from Angel’s room, right by the door. Gunn looked up and the screen was empty, and Gunn grunted with surprise because he would have taken any bet that Angel was still trembling in the corner.</p>
<p>“Can he – If he could tell me... I don’t – But when he... If he could.” Very quiet. Almost a whisper. But sounding lucid. His sleep couldn’t’ve been longer than ten, fifteen minutes. Very short.</p>
<p>Gunn stood up and went over to the door. “What’s wrong, Angel? Do you need something?”</p>
<p>A long silence, then: “Can I see him?”</p>
<p>Wesley had already come over. “I can’t read with you right now, Angel. I’m very busy.”</p>
<p>A strange sound, choked, then a burning – for maybe two seconds. “I thought... They had you. I thought... You escaped? I – I know what they do.”</p>
<p>Gunn said, “Sounds like you had a bad dream, Angel. But Wesley can’t read with you now. I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>“No! No, I wasn’t – I heard him. They had him.”</p>
<p>Wesley’s nightmare? Which would mean he’d been lucid the whole time.</p>
<p>“No one did anything to me, Angel. But I can come in for a minute if you do need to see. You have to move away from the door, though. Move back as far as your mattress.”</p>
<p>For the first half of the minute Angel just stood and stared at Wesley, then he reached out to touch his hand, then up to touch his face. Very, very brief. Testing. He nodded, trying to smile. “They didn’t have you. I didn’t hear it. You’re busy now.”</p>
<p>“Yes. But I’ll see you tomorrow. Why don’t you read on your own?”</p>
<p>Wesley left the apartment while Gunn was calling Swift. Didn’t say where he was going, just took his keys from the bowl and walked out. Gone to the grocery store, Gunn thought, then remembered that Wesley’s car was still at the library –and Wesley never drove the truck, didn’t have the keys for it in his set. Too late to follow by then, so Gunn took the phone to the window, where he could see the front door. Wesley came out, went over to the truck, and then just stood on the sidewalk next to it. He looked like the kid who always got picked last for the team, standing looking at the ground, trying to pretend that he wasn’t even noticing it had happened again. What was he doing? Had he forgotten about the car too? And gotten too embarrassed to come back in and admit it?</p>
<p>Swift agreed that Barney and Hank would probably not be found through their dealings with humans. She would call Gunn if her investigations took a different direction, but she didn’t need him to call in any more, not as a matter of routine. “Although... This financial firm... I don’t suppose they’d give you an in to Wolfram and Hart? They must move in the same circles.”</p>
<p>“Wolfram and Hart? That’s the law firm, right?”</p>
<p>“If there’s a customer in L.A., he’d be rich enough to afford them. And has probably done things that mean he needs them.”</p>
<p>So Wolfram and Hart dealt with demons? Knew about them, anyway. It sounded like Gunn should already have known that. “You think they’d help you, if you did have an in? You got somethin’ to offer?”</p>
<p>Swift sighed. “Well... We don’t want their client. Or...” A pause, then definite: “No. Even if the client placed an order, Barney’s the one we want. So if they could persuade their client to give Barney up. But, no, we don’t have anything to offer. Nothing to make them take the risk of even asking the client.”</p>
<p>Gunn said slowly, “I might have an in. I haven’t met the guy but he’s helped a friend a couple of times. I’ll ask her to call him now. Maybe if he has the weekend to think about it...”</p>
<p>Gunn called Anne on his way down to the truck. If he and Wesley left now, they’d have time to pick up Wesley’s car and be ready at the portal in case the message hadn’t got through to the duals. Wesley was still standing by the truck.</p>
<p>“You look like you forgot what you came out for, Wes. You OK to swing by the library ‘n’ get the car?”</p>
<p>During the ride they arranged that Gunn would go to the portal and Wesley would get some dinner in, and then they’d carry on with the research. At the car, when Wesley was about to get out, Gunn said, “Why d’you go down to the truck back then?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head and didn’t meet Gunn’s eyes. “She wouldn’t have wanted me to be there.”</p>
<p>“Eh? Who wouldn’t have wanted you? Where?”</p>
<p>“The demon. When you were talking to her.”</p>
<p>“You left the apartment because I was on the phone to Swift?” A nod. “That’s kind of crazy, Wes. Where’d’you get that?”</p>
<p>“I can’t... be with demons. Any demon would have to – If it knew I was – I can’t.”</p>
<p>“Oh, man. That was the heat of the moment in the hotel. There’s no one gonna go after you. I asked her last night. They know they could’ve made the same mistake. And what was she gonna do over the phone, anyway?”</p>
<p>“No. They shouldn’t have to – even think about me, whether I might be there. I can’t be there.”</p>
<p>“Well... OK. I c’n take all our meetings. No problem. Till you see there’s no need for you t’be thinkin’ like that.”</p>
<p>Gunn waited for half an hour and the duals didn’t show. Anne got back to him while he was waiting, said she’d got through to Lindsey at the office. He’d been weird about the demon stuff, sounded like he wanted to deny it completely and say she was crazy, but he’d already put too much into taking her seriously and they both knew it, and he hesitated enough to give her a chance to say something of what she’d seen on the streets, and in the end he’d just said this wasn’t a good time, he had to go into a meeting, he could see she was set on this, but it would have to wait.</p>
<p>Anne was annoyed but not surprised. She’d been disappointed in Lindsey when he’d blown her off over the zombie cops – just given her the same line as the precinct, blaming it on her kids. “God. Now I’m even wondering if he knew what was happening, all along. Just thought... I dunno... that it was OK, all in the name of law and order.” She laughed. “Like they have daily briefings in there on what’s happening in Precinct 87. Yeah, that’s worth their time, that’s what pays for those offices downtown.”</p>
<p>“Well... Y’know. Lawyers. Guess you can’t get through the week without having to cover up for at least one scumbag. No matter where you work or how you started out.” They needed Anne to stay cool with Lindsey, if Lindsey was ever going to help. Disappointed, sure, why not? But not all-out angry.</p>
<p>Wesley had been to Trader Joe’s and got lasagne. Smelled good. Gunn had a beer and ate about three fourths of the dish, and Wesley had water and struggled with each mouthful of food. Gunn let him be, let him give up when he himself finished his last helping. They talked about lawyers, and innocence, and things you couldn’t afford to know, and they left the dishes to soak and they went back to work.</p>
<p>By ten that night there was simply nothing more they could do, and they’d both been agreeing on that for the last half hour. Gunn turned off the computer and went to stand behind Wesley’s chair, put his hand on Wesley’s shoulder. “Wes? It’s been a day and a half now and we haven’t talked about it. Not really. You gotta let me help.”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged out from under Gunn’s hand and stood up. Looking down at the seat of his chair: “There’s nothing to talk about.” Then suddenly up at Gunn, eyes hard and fierce: “Everyone knows what I did.”</p>
<p>How had Gunn imagined Wesley was going to react, after what he’d been seeing all day? But Wesley didn’t have to keep going any more. He could let go. Gunn had to show him he could let go. “You think? So whadda they know?”</p>
<p>Wesley flinched but didn’t look away. “That I’d betray them for a meal. I’d betray myself. I was feeding them a lie, right from the start.”</p>
<p>“That’s bullshit! You got them way past that before we even left the hotel. You made a mistake. Hit the worst kind of bad luck, and made a normal mistake.”</p>
<p>Wesley was shaking his head. “I lied. I was scared then. And I lied. Of course I –” He swallowed. “You don’t know. You don’t know me.”</p>
<p>“Oh, you –” A pause. “No, I guess I don’t, ‘cos I sure as hell don’t get why you’re lying to me now. You think I’ll forget what I saw?”</p>
<p>“You never understood what you saw. I’ve done things... What I am -” Shaking his head again. “You’d be ashamed you’d ever been seen with me. Ever trusted me.”</p>
<p>“Wesley!” Gunn made to grab Wesley’s arm, wanting to shake him, but then stopped himself and took a stumbling step back, even before Wesley did. “Wes, don’t do this, don’t make me do this. Let me – God, what I’ve been needin’ to do since – Let me hold you and – Just let me hold you.”</p>
<p>“No.” Almost spat out, and Wesley moved back halfway to the door.</p>
<p>Gunn clutched at his head then reached out, unable to stop himself. “Wes... Wes... You any idea what it’s like to see you like this? You let me – You let me when Angel hurt you. Oh, man, you have to let go.”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed, and most of the tension and hardness went out of him. “Charles. I’m sorry. I know you want to help. But there is no help. There can’t be. I can’t let you... I can’t.” Hard again. “I don’t want - It.”</p>
<p>Not want your boyfriend to hold you when you were hurting? More bullshit. And Gunn would call him on it. But not now, that was as much arguing as Gunn could take for now. Tomorrow. Yeah. He knew how he’d start, with Angel needing to be held, and Wesley practically lying to Gunn so he could give Angel what he needed.</p>
<p>“There anything you do want? Anything I can do?”</p>
<p>A long pause, then a shrug. “Watch some television. Play one of your games. Have a beer. It’s Friday night.”</p>
<p>“You want to watch T.V.?”</p>
<p>An abrupt shake of the head. “I’m going to bed.”</p>
<p>“OK. Didn’t get much sleep last night either. Yeah, we’ll go to bed.”</p>
<p>Impatience, in a frown and a sigh. “I want to be alone for a few hours. Can you do that?”</p>
<p>“Uh. I guess I’ll play Quake, then.”</p>
<p>“Thank you.” Wesley went into the bathroom.</p>
<p>Gunn got a beer and was setting up the joystick and headphones when Wesley came out again. “You don’t have to use the headphones. The noise won’t bother me.”</p>
<p>“I’ve got used to playing with them. Helps me concentrate.”</p>
<p>A slow nod. “Good night, then. Thank you, Charles.”</p>
<p>Gunn was seriously tired by midnight, but kept going for another hour. Wesley was lying on top of the covers, hadn’t taken off anything except his shoes. And he was on his left side (which he hated to lie on, just hated), so his back was towards Gunn’s side of the bed. He was awake; not that he gave any sign of being aware of Gunn, but it was in his breathing.</p>
<p>Gunn got undressed and got properly into bed, and lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling. This was what Wesley wanted, wasn’t it? Layers between them like they were strangers, stranded in some nameless town, told how lucky they were to get to share the last room in the motel.</p>
<p>Wesley had coped for too long alone. Gunn had said that to him, a year ago. But it wasn’t just the coping with Angel. It was with his family, too, and with everything they’d set him up for. What had he said? People treating him like a management spy. For years. Yeah, he’d let Gunn help before, in the bad times with Angel. But this, it had driven him far, far back, to worse times. When there was no help. Like he’d said.</p>
<p>Gunn turned onto his side, towards Wesley. Time. This was going to take time. If he could, he’d pick Wesley up in his arms, carry him forward by a week, a month. However long Wesley needed to forgive himself. To stop needing to say those things about himself. Love ought to be enough. To be able to go to the Powers (to something), and say, “I love him. You know how much I love him. So he doesn’t, he doesn’t have to go through this. It’s my right.”</p>
<p>But maybe Wesley did just need time on his own. Like his weekend in San Diego. He’d let Gunn help, but really he’d sorted himself out. And he’d done it quickly. So maybe Gunn shouldn’t push, shouldn’t try to break through. He should give him space. Ask if he wanted to go away again. Yeah, he’d coped too long on his own, but he’d gotten good at it.</p>
<p>“We have to stop our work. We can’t do it anymore. I – We’ll send them their files. Refund everything they’ve paid.”</p>
<p>Gunn took his time figuring out what he should say. “Give ‘em the option, yeah. It’d look drastic, though, if they ain’t even asked. Look like we’re dissin’ ‘em. Gotta count against us when the time looks right to start up again. Be better, anyway, to try to keep going. Keep the momentum. Bein’ drastic... People’ll watch it on T.V, but they don’t wanna do business with it.”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed and rolled onto his back. “Charles. You talk as if... How people see us. What people want. That’s – the least. I can’t work with demons any more. I’ve lost the right. I’m not an expert. I don’t know anything. How can I... tell any demon anything? I don’t trust myself. I never will.”</p>
<p>Now that was drastic. And what could you say except, “You’ll change your mind. Eventually.”? “OK. I get it. I’ll call ‘em all. Explain. Just sendin’ stuff back... We wanna treat ‘em like people, right?”</p>
<p>“I – Would you? I can’t talk to them. But I wouldn’t ask you to.”</p>
<p>“I know.” Gunn wanted to talk to the demons. Was gonna be tough. Explaining. Listening. But if enough said they did still trust Wesley... Wesley wasn’t in a state to hear that, not now, but maybe in a month. “I’ll start tomorrow. I’ll do it from the truck. Go somewhere. S’you don’t have to be there.”</p>
<p>“Thank you.”</p>
<p>“What if there’s a case I can do on my own? ‘n’ they still want it done? How’d you be with that?”</p>
<p>Very quietly: “You’ve done nothing wrong.”</p>
<p>“I told Piriti that you’d saved an empath demon. From the Kungai. So he told Barney.”</p>
<p>“You didn’t know.”</p>
<p>And neither did you. “What about the duals? You want me to stop that too? Find some humans to train with. We still have to deal with the visions, right?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. About the visions. I suppose... we’ll see. But, yes, we have to stop the duals. And we have to train.” Tense: “Does Grouw know yet?”</p>
<p>“I told him this afternoon. And Piriti. They’re helping Swift. She thanked me for sending them.”</p>
<p>“Good. That’s good.” On an exhausted sigh, and then Wesley got himself back onto his left side. After a while he did fall asleep, and then Gunn slept too.</p>
<p>Gunn woke to the smell of coffee. Wesley was in the same clothes, and he hadn’t shaved. He was sitting on the couch – no book, no mug of coffee, just sitting – but he got up and said he’d got some pastries from Trader Joe’s, he’d put them in to heat now.</p>
<p>Wesley said he’d eaten, had one of his yogurts, and he didn’t want any more coffee. Gunn took his breakfast to the couch, and Wesley sat down again and watched him.</p>
<p>“You gonna change? Those clothes look like you slept in ‘em.”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged. “After training.”</p>
<p>“OK.”</p>
<p>It was a terrible training session. Wesley would be fierce in the attack, and then suddenly lose all conviction. He admitted that the attack was for Barney, and then he’d remember the Prio Motu, what would have happened without Gunn.</p>
<p>Not surprising. “We gotta work on it. Try again tomorrow.” Wesley agreed. Gunn thought Wesley might want to give up, say he knew already that he couldn’t do it. But he must still have some faith left in himself. Though it was only training, no one to get hurt apart from himself.</p>
<p>Back home, Wesley took about ten minutes to choose his change of clothes – just stood in front of the wardrobe, staring. In the end he got a pair of chinos and (really weird) one of Angel’s black sweaters. He still didn’t shave. The sweater hung so loose on him. He looked so thin. Gunn offered to help him pin up the arm, but he didn’t need help, not with something he’d done a hundred times before.</p>
<p>Gunn got all the files for their cases. Time to go and make some calls. “What you gonna do, Wes? Read?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “I don’t know. What do you want to eat? For dinner.”</p>
<p>“How about a curry?” Gunn smiled. “I’ve been having the dreams about the roasted eggplant.”</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t smile back, but he nodded. “I’ll go out to the store. We’ve got nothing in. How long do you think you’ll be?”</p>
<p>“Couple of hours, at least.” Wesley wanting time on his own? “When d’you need me back?”</p>
<p>“If you’re back by four, then I’ll go to the store after that, so I won’t leave Angel.”</p>
<p>“Should be fine. I’ll call if it looks like being later.”</p>
<p>Gunn stopped in a Pollo Loco to get a couple of burritos and a large soda, and then decided he’d just stay parked in the lot, make all the calls from there. Private as anywhere else. He called Grouw first, and Grouw wasn’t surprised about the duals. He’d spoken to his sister the previous evening, and she was coming in a few hours to spend the rest of the weekend with him. Grouw had spoken to Matt, too – not to spread the misery, not to say, “Look what happened when you dumped us.” – but because he knew that Matt would want to be told. Grouw was going around to the beach house on Sunday evening. Piriti hadn’t returned his pages yet.</p>
<p>“What did Yan say?”</p>
<p>“She has some prisoners like Barney. Not empaths. ‘Collectors’, she said. Most do it for fucked-up personal reasons. They talk about it all the time. The others... They could pass themselves off as regular guys. She said she’d look in their records. Maybe there’s something. She said she wouldn’t be able to sleep for a week if she found out she’d met one by accident. It’s bad enough when they’re locked up.”</p>
<p>“Y’couldn’t sleep?”</p>
<p>“I was in a car with him. I was joking with him. I must have been there when he started planning... for the Kekulei demons.”</p>
<p>Gunn swallowed. “Wesley can’t eat.”</p>
<p>“A meal alone with him. God.” A pause, and Gunn thought he heard a door close. “My roommates’ve heard about what happened. About Wesley. I’m telling them, but – They don’t know any humans. Not to speak to. They think it’s... That he could’ve worked it out about Barney, if he’d wanted to. But since it was just demons... He didn’t really care. And someone’s started a stupid story about the whole survey.”</p>
<p>“How stupid? We gonna be lynched on sight?”</p>
<p>“They don’t really believe it. But they want to believe something bad about humans. They won’t do more than talk but you should be careful.”</p>
<p>“The both of us?”</p>
<p>“You weren’t part of what happened. The way they told it. I mean, you weren’t in the story at all. But when I told them what I’d heard straight from you, then... they came up with their own stories about how you were nearly as bad. ‘You were just protecting him.’ ‘You must have known.’ So if there’s someone who wants him, I think they’d take you as a start.”</p>
<p>Gunn wanted to call Swift, remind her of her promise to warn him to get Wesley out of town. But she wouldn’t have forgotten, and she had enough to deal with.</p>
<p>They had eleven cases, and Gunn got through to nine of the clients. Two hung up on him as soon as he introduced himself, two shouted at him and then hung up, one shouted and then let him give Wesley’s side, and the other four hadn’t heard at all so he told the story starting with the murders and working back. None of them wanted to deal with Wesley any more, and for most it wasn’t because they were angry or disgusted – they’d met Wesley, they knew he was too honest, too serious, they could imagine exactly how it had all happened – but because they just couldn’t face him. And they didn’t want to have to explain to anyone else why they were still dealing with him. Because it was going to look like a statement, earn you some enemies, whatever you argued about Wesley’s innocence. Two said they’d deal with Gunn, no problem explaining Gunn, but the others said yes, they wanted to close the case and get the refund.</p>
<p>Nearly two o’clock. Gunn drove till he saw a place he knew he could buy a pack of envelopes to post the files, sat in the truck and addressed the seven envelopes, and then decided to get another soda, have a walk in Alondra Park, and get home some time past three. He called Rondell from the park. No real plans yet for Sunday afternoon. They might have a game of pickup. Or there was still the movies. Gunn would turn up at the base after lunch. Maybe they’d just hang out for a few hours.</p>
<p>Wesley had moved his main bookcase from beside his desk, across the room to behind Gunn’s computer chair, to the left of Angel’s door. He’d put it right in front of another bookcase – “Angel’s bookcase” was how Gunn thought of it, though a lot of the books were Wesley’s. Gunn suggested they move Angel’s bookcase over to the gaping space beside Wesley’s desk, but Wesley said he didn’t need any of those books now. Looked like he didn’t need anything except his language books.</p>
<p>While Wesley was out at the store, Gunn typed and printed the covering letters for the files, and then did the refunds (nearly a thousand dollars). He put the envelopes and the four open files away in the filing cabinet, out of sight. Angel was asleep – or, no, it was Angelus, and maybe that wasn’t sleep, more like a hallucination. He was pressing himself against the floor, growling, arching with pleasure, and talking about killing and drinking and how he’d “make him beg to die”. Exactly like he acted in a vision. Gunn turned the screen off, thought about gagging him, but that would be too dangerous without the guarantees of a real vision.</p>
<p>Wesley was away for much longer than the usual trip to the store, and Gunn guessed he’d decided to shop for the week, not just for the curry. When he heard the sound of the car, he went down to help carry. There were four bags, but only two were groceries; the others were much lighter than Gunn was expecting, and full of clothes.</p>
<p>Thrift-shop clothes. Gunn couldn’t believe it. He took the bags into the bedroom while Wesley was unpacking the groceries, looked inside just out of curiosity, and ended up pulling all of the clothes out onto the bed. Three T-shirts, in washed-out shades of green, brown and grey, labels all faded to nothing. A baggy grey cotton sweater. A canvas jacket, looked almost army-surplus. Two pairs of light-brown pants, one canvas, one corduroy.</p>
<p>This wasn’t Wesley. Wesley dressed like an accountant. Always. He had his business-meeting shirts, and his research shirts, and his beer-drinking shirts, and his fighting shirts, and his fuck-me shirts. But all of them button-down shirts, because it was so difficult for him now, to pull something over his head. Street clothes from a thrift-shop. That wasn’t his Wesley. His Wesley wore his best suit to a meeting with homeless kids.</p>
<p>“What’s with the clothes?” Gunn had joined Wesley in the kitchen. “They for Anne’s kids or something? She call while I was out?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “I had to get... something different. I can’t wear – I’m not that person any more.”</p>
<p>“So you – Some other guy’s T-shirt? And another guy’s jeans? So who are you, then? Hell, Wes! You gotta wardrobe full of clothes I love you in.”</p>
<p>Wesley closed his eyes and turned away. His voice was shaking. “You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t have. That was... a shell. I never had – There was nothing there. Now...” A deep sigh. “I won’t pretend. I can’t.”</p>
<p>Gunn couldn’t speak, for how long he didn’t know. Finally, on a whisper: “That you loved me?”</p>
<p>Wesley turned back in a jerk, mouth and eyes wide with shock. A pause, then he started to reach out, and then pulled his hand back with another jerk. Now his look was Angel’s look, beaten, and he said slowly, “That I was worth anything. I don’t know...” Shaking his head, over and over. “I can’t feel.”</p>
<p>Oh, God. Gunn took the two steps and pulled Wesley into his arms, held him tight, tight. “Wes. Wes. Don’t talk like that. Please. God, don’t. It’s the shock. You’re – You’re half-crazy with shock. I know why. I know. But I can’t – Even just telling you, ‘You’re wrong. You’re not what you said.’ Don’t make me say it, what you said. Don’t make me even think it. We’re gonna get through this. All we’ve been through with Angel, course we’ll get through this. But don’t – Don’t talk like that. It’s the shock. It’s – It’s just the shock.”</p>
<p>Wesley had been tense in Gunn’s arms, was still tense. But then his hand came up, pressed on Gunn’s back. “No. I won’t. I’m sorry. I know you – I’ll stop it. I’ll stop.”</p>
<p>“It’ll help, Wes. It will. You too.”</p>
<p>Gunn could feel Wesley nodding, but then Wesley was pulling back – just slightly, not pushing him away. “I should start the curry. There’s a lot of chopping.” Gunn let go, and moved back to the doorway.</p>
<p>“You want to rent a movie? I think ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ is just out.”</p>
<p>“I won’t watch it. So you should get whatever you want.”</p>
<p>“What’ll you do?”</p>
<p>“I’ll go to the bedroom. And – you’re not driving me out. I want you to enjoy your film. I’ll be glad to know you’re enjoying it. I just – I’m not in the mood to do anything.”</p>
<p>Gunn rented “Thirteen Days” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” from Blockbuster – not too obvious as movies to change Wesley’s mind, but not what Gunn would have chosen just for himself – and he got more beer on the way home. He put on one of Wesley’s classical CDs and lay on the couch with a travel book (maybe originally Angel’s) – and after a few pages he started to feel horny. Nothing to do with the book. Just... Saturday night, and Wesley busy in the kitchen, and the smell of spices, and the Blockbuster cases stacked on top of the T.V. A date. His body knew all the signs of one of their dates, and it would not listen to reason. It didn’t even care about the chill that still gripped it from seeing the clothes, from all those things Wesley had said. Wesley was close, there was the evening ahead, it wanted sex.</p>
<p>Boy, but it was going to have a long wait if it wanted anything more than Gunn’s hand. Wesley saying he couldn’t feel... Gunn remembered, in the bad years for him with his crew, that there’d been times when he hadn’t thought about sex in two, three weeks. Like the connection had just been cut, shut off like it had never been there. And his heart, too, clenched solid, biting down on rage, pressed down with despair. Warmth, lightness, openness didn’t belong there, had no chance of forcing a way in. He was surrounded by people he knew he liked, some he knew he loved, but he didn’t feel it. And then that would be past and he’d forget what it really felt like, how those bad times took you over. Until the next bad time, maybe six months later. Two weeks must have been the longest one of those bad times had lasted. They’d been short at first, a few days, but by the end - and he remembered this from what Alonna would say to him - by the end each bad time always lasted at least a week.</p>
<p>And Wesley now was worse than Gunn had ever been. Much worse. He’d never talked like Wesley was talking. Never. Alonna would get sick and tired of him picking apart all the ways the odds were stacked against him, he’d seen her exasperated, bored, annoyed with him – but never scared for him like he was feeling scared for Wesley. A month for Wesley? Two, even?</p>
<p>No. No, he wasn’t going to try and guess. He wasn’t going to say, “Well, he’s five times worse than I was, so...” One day at a time. One movie, one bag of worn clothes, one hard-on with nowhere to go (except maybe the bathroom, because the music had shifted and now Wesley was working in time to it, and Gunn could see Wesley’s reflection in the T.V, just clear enough to show the stubble – and Wes with stubble on a Saturday evening, with all the signs of a date...).</p>
<p>Again, Wesley drank water and ate a third of what Gunn ate. But he smiled when Gunn thanked him for the meal – too brief, more of a tremor, but still the first time since Thursday.</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t go to the bedroom when Gunn started watching “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, but went down to do laundry instead, including the thift-shop clothes. Gunn got caught up in the movie very quickly, and it was more than half over when he paused it to get another beer and realised that Wesley hadn’t come back.</p>
<p>The wash-cycle must have been finished for at least half an hour but Wesley hadn’t moved the clothes to the drier. He was sitting in the battered plastic chair, near the washer, but turned away from it, his back to the door. He looked around and started to stand up when Gunn came in, then paused, looked like he was going to sit down again, then gave a sigh, pushed the chair out of the way, and started to unload the washer. He’d been crying. Not much, and he looked again like he didn’t know he’d been doing it; the tracks were so clear, he couldn’t have even tried to wipe them away.</p>
<p>“Was it a good film?”</p>
<p>“Not done yet, but yeah, you’ll like it. I’d watch it again, any time. You gonna stay down here ‘n’ guard the drier too?”</p>
<p>“I might as well.”</p>
<p>“I’ll bring you some tea.” All he could think of to offer.</p>
<p>A pause, then Wesley frowned and smiled at the same time. “No. I’m fine. I’m sorry I made you interrupt your film.”</p>
<p>“When you’re done, then?”</p>
<p>Gunn sat with the remote in his hand for maybe ten minutes before he could bring himself to press play. Watching a movie, drinking a beer – knowing that the man you loved was sitting alone in a bare room, crying because... because he hated himself. What kind of man could do that? Well... the kind of man that Wesley wanted him to be. Or wanted him to pretend to be.</p>
<p>What did Wes want? Not to have to think about him. To be sure that he wasn’t going to come downstairs again worrying, asking questions. Nothing would stop Gunn from worrying, but maybe he’d be able to hide it better if he gave himself the movie to think about too.</p>
<p>After Wesley had drunk his tea he went straight to bed, saying he was leaving Gunn to watch the film. Again, Wesley didn’t take his clothes off, and he didn’t get properly into bed. He was lying on his back, though, not turned away, and he lay and watched Gunn get undressed, and he reached up and touched Gunn’s hand on the pillow and wished him goodnight.</p>
<p>Gunn was woken several times in the night by Wesley having restless dreams. Not nightmares; he kept on saying, “No,” but then he said, “That’s not hurting me,” so Gunn stopped wondering if he should wake Wesley up.</p>
<p>On Sunday morning Wesley still didn’t shave, and he dressed in clothes from the thrift shop and looked grim and determined, which Gunn had seen before, in the early days when Wesley was coping with Angel on his own. And that was reassuring, really. Because Gunn knew that person, that grim Wesley, knew Wesley must have been coping like that for months, maybe getting grimmer every day. But when that Wesley laughed he looked like a different person, and Gunn had been able to make him laugh. Not deliberately (or not at first), but still he’d done it, and now he could imagine this Wesley laughing. Some day, when neither of them was expecting it.</p>
<p>Training was terrible again. Afterwards they went for brunch at Soup Plantation (Gunn’s idea), and Wesley did eat. Just salad, but no one looking at him would think there was anything wrong, not like seeing him struggle at home. Maybe that was the answer: taking him out to eat.</p>
<p>Anne had been repainting the shelter, and she’d had some paint left over and had given it to Rondell, so Gunn got handed a brush as soon as he arrived at the base and got made part of the big team painting the main bedroom. He would’ve worn different clothes if he’d known – his digging clothes – but no big deal. In one of their breaks he got enough time alone with Rondell to ask him what the crew was doing for training now, and whether there was room for him and Wesley, a couple of times a week. Sure there was. When did they want to start? OK, Wednesday. Around eight.</p>
<p>“Wes... Y’might need to go easy on him. At first. He – He had somethin’ go wrong. Took it hard. So he’s... he’s been actin’ like he’s lost his nerve. He’ll get over it, but...” Gunn shrugged. “Haven’t figured out yet how hard to push him.”</p>
<p>“Like Eladio, right? And Donnie?” Guys who’d had bad near-misses, two, three years ago. Gunn nodded, ‘cos, yeah, that was as much as Rondell needed to know. “Then we’ll get him through. We’ll figure it out”</p>
<p>When Gunn got home, Wesley wasn’t working at his desk like Gunn had expected, but then Gunn saw that the door to Angel’s room was open, and a glance up at the screen showed him that Wesley and Angel were sitting together in their usual place against the wall. Wesley reading: that had to be good.</p>
<p>Gunn got himself a soda and was going to go change into clean clothes when he realised that there wasn’t any sound coming from Angel’s room. He took another look at the screen, and then dropped his soda and leapt to grab holy-water and a crossbow; Wesley wasn’t sitting next to Angel, he was lying against him, held half-upright against Angel’s chest, like he’d fallen across Angel’s thighs and Angel had caught him. Wesley wasn’t conscious, Gunn could see from the way he was lying; and Angel was curled around Wesley, hiding Wesley’s face as well as his own.</p>
<p>“Put him down! Put him down, vampire. Get away from him.”</p>
<p>The vampire raised its head. Its face was human, and there was no blood, not on its mouth or on Wesley. And Gunn saw Wesley breathe. “He needs to sleep.” Angel was acting like he didn’t see Gunn’s weapons, like Gunn had just come in to ask his opinion.</p>
<p>Gunn’s heart was still pounding, not even starting to slow, and now it felt like his brain had just stopped working, might never work again. He had to do something, he had to say something – but Angel’s hands were cradling Wesley’s body, Angel’s arm was crooked to support Wesley’s head, and Gunn’s thoughts tore apart, and there was heat and a roaring, and pressure in slow, uneven waves. Finally (and his voice sounded normal, how did it sound normal?): “He can’t sleep here. It isn’t safe for him. You’re too dangerous. We never know what you might do.”</p>
<p>Angel looked down at Wesley, then back at Gunn. “I won’t kill him. He doesn’t want me to kill him.” A roaring again, but different, sharper. A different disbelief, a separate area gone to overload. “I guess you won’t. But Angelus would. If he found him in here asleep.”</p>
<p>Angel looked alarmed, and he must have tightened his hold because Wesley grunted and sighed, and rolled his head a quarter turn over the curve of Angel’s arm, and then slowly sank back. Almost a whisper: “Would he find him? Would they let him find him?”</p>
<p>“He was here yesterday. Angelus. I saw him. They don’t care. They wouldn’t do anything to stop it.”</p>
<p>Angel stared at Wesley for a long time. Then, still looking at him: “Where can he sleep? He needs to sleep.”</p>
<p>“You have to wake him up. Make him leave. You can’t let him sleep in here.”</p>
<p>Angel was frowning, shaking his head. “Where does he sleep? You. Where do you sleep? I could take him there.” He shifted his left arm off Wesley’s waist, and made to get to his feet and pick Wesley up.</p>
<p>Gunn hesitated. Angel needed to learn to wake Wesley up – no exceptions, no “but if I’m here, it’s OK for you to –”. But Christ did Wesley need to sleep. Looked like he’d sleep through an earthquake.</p>
<p>“Is it near where we go for the shower? Is it there now?” Angel had got to his knees, very smooth - impossibly smooth when you thought about how he was having to hold Wesley steady in his arms the whole time. Not human, that strength and control. A cat, Gunn had thought long ago. A panther.</p>
<p>A different bedroom then, and Wesley naked in the bed, and sleeping and sticky from sex.</p>
<p>“No. You can’t.” Not a panther. Nothing natural. A demon in a corpse. “You can’t see where he sleeps. I told you to wake him up.” Gunn hooked the holy water into his pocket and slung the crossbow over his shoulder, stepped over, right in Angel’s face, leaned in and shook Wesley by the shoulder, hard enough that he felt the padding shift under his hand.</p>
<p>“Charles? What? What was...?” Groggy, confused. Then Wesley seemed to notice that he was being held off the ground, and he started fumbling to get to his feet, very disoriented and unfocused. Gunn was reaching out to steady him when Wesley looked up and saw that it was Angel holding him, and he went rigid with horror. Angel let go almost immediately and Wesley fell heavily to the floor; Gunn had no chance of catching him, just managed to jump back so Wesley didn’t fall against his legs.</p>
<p>Wesley landed with a yelp of pain, and didn’t try to get up like he would have in a fight, but just lay gasping. “Oh, God, Wes, I’m sorry. He was – I told him to put you down, but I – I should have made him. Are you OK? You hit your head?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded, then slowly rolled over onto his knees and clambered to his feet. Gunn helped him up then kept him close with an arm around his waist, and Wesley did lean on him, really seemed shaken. Not surprising. This was Wesley’s near-miss. Missed by an hour, maybe, not the seconds that Rondell would mean. But if Wesley had gone in an hour earlier, if Gunn had come home an hour later... They both knew what could have been waiting for Gunn.</p>
<p>“C’mon. Let’s get you out of here.” Wesley was following Gunn’s coaxing, making for the door. Angel was edging along the wall towards his corner; Gunn could hear each dragging step and the rasp against the roughness of the wall. The sounds stopped before Gunn and Wesley reached the door but Gunn didn’t think that Angel had got to his corner and he took a look over his shoulder to check. No, Angel was still a couple of yards short. Slumped against the wall, his back to the corner. Very withdrawn: sulking, or maybe guilty about hurting Wesley. He was looking towards where they’d been sitting, and Gunn turned his head to look too, and saw a drained beaker, right against the wall on Wesley’s side, like Angel had given it back to Wesley and Wesley had forgotten it. Gunn would get it after he’d seen to Wesley.</p>
<p>“Thanks. I’m OK now.” Wesley had pulled away but he was leaning against the table, still not holding himself right.</p>
<p>“How’s your head? Thought I heard it bounce.”</p>
<p>A smile, and Wesley looked more like himself, much more awake. “I haven’t got concussion. You must have heard my glasses trying to decide where to break. Fortunately the vote was split.” Wesley didn’t want to sleep – well, he did, he kept on yawning – but he shouldn’t, or he wouldn’t sleep again at night. He’d do some translation; the effort of concentration should wake him up. And a strong tea would help.</p>
<p>While Wesley was putting the kettle on, Gunn went back into Angel’s room to get the beaker. Now Angel was in his corner, hunched over. After he’d got the beaker Gunn stood looking at Angel for a while, then went over and knelt down at his level, at a safe distance.</p>
<p>“Wesley’s OK, Angel. He was just kinda shaken. Surprised. I know you just wanted to help him. ‘n’ I wanted to keep him safe. It’ll be easier next time. You just wake him up straight away and tell him he has to leave.”</p>
<p>Angel slowly raised his head, stared at Gunn, expressionless, then lowered his head again. Gunn shrugged and left.</p>
<p>Gunn decided to have a bath. He needed to chill out, let the adrenaline soak itself away, and there was the paint and dust and sweat he’d got with his crew. He took the travel book in with him but didn’t read more than a page; just lay and listened to the sounds of Wesley working, clear through the half-open door, and with only a wall and a linen-closet between the desk and the bath.</p>
<p>There hadn’t been a book. Not where they’d been sitting, not where they could have reached. The books were all in their stack in the corner, neat like they hadn’t been touched in a week.</p>
<p>(A week. Last Sunday. Wesley dressing for his meal with Barney. Smart and impatient in his suit.)</p>
<p>So they hadn’t been reading. They must just have been talking. Yeah. Angel must’ve given the beaker back to Wesley and said, “Stay and talk. Sit down here right next to me. Talk to me.” And Wesley hadn’t said, “I can’t.” He hadn’t said, “I’m not in the mood to talk to you. And there’s nothing to talk about.” Nothing like he’d said to Gunn. So natural and comfortable to be talking to his vampire he must’ve leaned heavier and heavier against him until he fell asleep. And then Angel got to hold him. Angel got to know, with each slow, peaceful breath, that he was doing this right, he was doing what Wesley needed.</p>
<p>And then Angel got to see that Wesley really didn’t want to be touched. Would Wesley have looked at Gunn like that, if he’d woken up in Gunn’s arms? Yes. Probably. So Gunn almost felt sorry for Angel. But Wesley had stayed and talked to Angel. Wesley had acted like he wanted to talk to Angel.</p>
<p>“What were the two of you talking about before you fell asleep.” Gunn hadn’t dressed yet, was still in his robe. Maybe he’d stay like this; act out through clothes, like Wesley.</p>
<p>Wesley frowned. “I can’t remember. He said I looked different. Smelled different. He could still smell something of the men who’d worn my clothes before. So he asked about them. But after that...” A shrug. “I can’t remember.”</p>
<p>“So – You tell him why you’re not shaving? About what happened?”</p>
<p>Wesley flinched, just slightly, then shook his head. “I told him I’d made a mistake.”</p>
<p>The exact truth. Angel got to hear the exact truth. “Did it help? Talkin’ to him. How long’d it take you to fall asleep? I know you weren’t reading.”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed, looked over at Angel’s door. “He knows a great deal about making mistakes. We – We’ve always been similar in some ways.”</p>
<p>” ‘n’ I’m too different? Just won’t understand? You must’ve sat down there wanting to talk to him. What’s that from? You say you can’t talk, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. You mean just with me. So... what’s he do?”</p>
<p>Wesley closed his eyes, looking exhausted, and dropped his head back. A deep sigh, then another, even deeper. When he raised his head to look at Gunn, it was with a visible effort. “Nothing. Nothing you’d want to do. Nothing I’d want you to do. It’s more... what he’s done. That makes him worse than me. Much worse. Where you’re better. I feel – I feel like a disease. I don’t want you to be near me. I want you to stay safe. But him...” A shrug. “I can’t make any difference to him. I don’t love him. He’s never loved me. It’s... It’s simple.”</p>
<p>Angel curled over Wesley, facing down Gunn and the crossbow for the sake of Wesley’s sleep. But Wesley hadn’t seen that, so he didn’t know as much as Gunn did about what Angel felt. “I ain’t better. Wes. Wes.” He put his hand over his eyes for a couple of breaths, then dragged it slowly back over his head. “Guess you know everythin’ I’m thinking to say to you right now.”</p>
<p>A small nod. “I think so.”</p>
<p>“Be wasting my breath?”</p>
<p>Another nod. “This wasn’t my first mistake. Not by any means. I –” He swallowed. “I can’t. I can’t bear to tell you. I know you’d have to –” A long, shaking breath. “All this time I’d been hiding from them. From my mistakes. I’d been hiding behind you. Behind Angel. Letting myself think that I’d changed. When all the time… So – I know I’m being selfish. That it must be -” Shaking his head. “That there’s no reason you’d understand.”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Well... I c’n guess why it’s simpler with Angel. He’s never got jealous, has he? Of me?” Wesley shook his head and mouthed a no. “I wanna hold you like that. Know you didn’t let him, not on purpose, but... Jeez, I’m even jealous that he got to sit that close to you! But that’s just –” A small smile, just a twist. “Didn’t even know I got jealous till I met you.”</p>
<p>No joke to Wesley, anything but. Frowning, pained: “I’ve no right to – To that attention. From you. I never – You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t.”</p>
<p>OK. So add a couple more months to the time for Gunn to have to take his “attention” to the bathroom. He leaned forward, took Wesley’s hand, and rubbed his thumb back and forth around Wesley’s ring. “You got the right. A hundred times over. Hundred and one if you’ll pretend you never saw me get stupid over bein’ jealous. Yeah, it’s simpler. Course the two of you talk.” He sat back. “But you gotta promise you’ll never fucking fall asleep in there again. I’ve told him ten times now he’s got to wake you up. Now you tell him another twenty. Christ, man! First few seconds, you looked like you could be dead.”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry.” Wesley put his hand on Gunn’s knee, bare through the gap in the robe, and Gunn had to close his eyes for a moment at the punch of heat to his heart and his cock, blood urgent to the point of pain. “I’ll tell him every time we sit down.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>On Monday morning Gunn went out in the truck to call the two clients he hadn’t reached on Saturday. One hung up, the other said he’d been going to call later in the day: he’d heard four different stories over the weekend (including one that had Wesley breaking down in the hotel, on his knees to a Kekulei demon, begging for forgiveness), and he hadn’t really believed any of them. He didn’t want to close the case, though he didn’t see how Gunn was going to be able to do the work, not with what he’d seen of people’s attitudes (“Hey, I was homeless, livin’ on the streets since I was twelve. People lookin’ though me, prayin’ not to have me speak to ‘em... Didn’t hold me back then. Won’t now.”); so he’d give Gunn two weeks to see what he could do, but then he might have to take the case somewhere else because he did need results.</p>
<p>Three cases left out of eleven. Not bad. Really. Gunn had brought along envelopes and covering letters for both of the clients (reckoning they’d both hang up), so he was able to go straight to the Post Office and send back the files for all of the eight other cases.</p>
<p>While he was waiting he got a call from Matt. Matt said he’d spent all Sunday evening talking with Grouw and they were both really worried about Wesley and Gunn. Gunn couldn’t talk, not in line at the Post Office, and Matt was about to go into a class, but he had a couple of hours free for lunch.</p>
<p>Gunn told Matt some of what was happening with Wesley – not the terrible things Wesley kept saying, nothing about Angel – but about the clothes and the eating and not getting into bed and refusing to let Gunn near. Gunn had needed to talk to another human, someone who’d know what he meant if he said he loved Wesley. And Matt was his only human friend who knew about Wyndham Gunn, who understood that Wesley’s mistake had changed everything. Matt listened properly and quietly, and when Gunn asked, said he couldn’t think of anything that Gunn could do different. Just had to wait, like he was doing, remember it was shock, it had just been a few days, only felt like forever. Wesley would get better, gotta focus on that. He’d find his way out of the shock.</p>
<p>God. Good to hear that from someone else. And Matt hugged him goodbye – because he needed it, they both needed it – and no one seeing it would guess that this was a straight guy hugging his fag friend for the first time. Matt wasn’t thinking “straight” and “fag” (and he had to sometimes, didn’t he?); he was just thinking “friend”. Like Gunn with Wesley, their first night of beers and talking, with Angelus still snarling in the next room. Wes had needed to be held then, and he’d known it, he’d wanted more. Of course he had. People needed to be held.</p>
<p>Matt invited Gunn over to the beach-house, too, if he needed to give Wesley some of that time alone.</p>
<p>“What about Holly?”</p>
<p>A shrug. “You mind if she’s there?” Gunn shook his head. “I’ll tell her you’ve got stuff goin’ on at home. Need to get out and chill. Know she’ll be OK with that.”</p>
<p>“How’d we meet?”</p>
<p>Through a guy Matt used to know. Taylor. Who’d been into self-defence, been on some course with Gunn.</p>
<p>“Taylor. OK.” He’d come over on Thursday, probably. Which had been Caritas night just a month ago.</p>
<p>Time to get down to work, time to keep those three clients. Have to go very carefully, treat every talk with a demon like a raid on a nest of vamps, always keep a clear line to the exit; but keep everything casual, like you’d never think of being scared, ‘cos you know you’ve done nothing wrong. He wanted to call Swift first, get a reading or something from her before he went in. But that was just avoidance: putting it on someone else; wasting time. Anyway, people knew where she stood on Wyndham Gunn, so she wouldn’t get to hear the worst. Gunn just had to see for himself.</p>
<p>A tough few hours, but after the first three demons, Gunn knew that he could deal. Like a raid on a nest of vamps, it was a hell of a challenge, and it needed doing, and damn! but it was the best feeling in the world when you saw them start to fall back, when you knew you’d carried it through. Didn’t matter what they said about him or even about Wes, just ran straight off him ‘cos none of it was true.</p>
<p>Anne called in the evening, when Gunn and Wesley were about to go for training. Lindsey had got back to her, and the news was much better than she’d expected: Wolfram and Hart were going to ask the clients, all the clients. The partners had made the decision very quickly, stated the firm’s position very clearly. A person might consider buying a Tak horn if told it was an antique, like buying an ancient ivory chess-set. One accepts the cruelties of the distant past – what else can one do? People were different then, though ignorance. But to find that you’d been tricked into taking part in such a crime, into bringing it into your own home... Yes, Wolfram and Hart knew that their clients would want to know.</p>
<p>So Lindsey needed a full list of the items, as much detail as possible; he’d be waiting for the call or the fax from whoever was running the case. Gunn called Swift and gave her Lindsey’s details, and took the chance to remind her that she’d promised to warn him if he needed to get Wesley out of town. She acted like she thought he was joking – a lot had happened since she’d made the promise, and no one she knew had thought of Wesley in days. Of course she’d warn him, but she wouldn’t ever need to.</p>
<p>Training was better. Gunn was still fired up from his afternoon of work, and he thought that made most of the difference; he was in-the-moment, forgetting to worry about Wesley and Wesley’s imagination, and he drew Wesley in too.</p>
<p>Back home Wesley cooked, then he went to the bedroom and Gunn watched TV and played with the computer. Wesley wouldn’t read, nothing except the newspaper and his translation books. He said Angel didn’t want to read either. Gunn would wait a week, then see if he could bribe Angel into wanting to read.</p>
<p>Wesley wasn’t sleeping well. No surprise. Some of his nightmares were noisy, frantic; others a long, low moaning and there were some where he snarled like Angelus. Wesley never wanted to tell Gunn what he’d been dreaming, and he didn’t even want Gunn to wake him up. “It’s only a nightmare. It’s not going to kill me. Obviously, if it’s stopping you from sleeping... But I think you’ll get used to it, like we got used to Angel.”</p>
<p>Yeah, he probably would, and wasn’t that sick? He could feel it settling into place, their new routine. Every day (every night) looking the same for Wesley. Except for his meetings with Lilah on Wednesdays morning when he’d shave and wear his chinos and a sweater. And the training with the crew on Wednesdays and Sundays, when he’d be so normal, laughing with George, taking in all the news and gossip, talking his share of crap during the breaks – and then shutting down the second they were out of sight in the truck, blank and withdrawn like Angel huddled in his corner. He wouldn’t speak until the next morning, and once not until the next afternoon.</p>
<p>But he didn’t say those terrible things any more, he didn’t cry (or not that Gunn could see). He seemed to enjoy the training – no, not having to act normal for the crew, but he enjoyed the fighting, would talk about it when he was ready to talk. And he liked cooking, wanted Gunn to think about what he asked for, really care about it. Gunn started looking through Wesley’s cookbooks, not knowing how to describe many of the dishes he liked, and they talked about food more than they ever had. Strange, with Wesley still leaving at least half of most meals. But then Wesley was a strange man.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Angel had his next vision on a Saturday night, when Gunn was on his way back from the beach-house. A group of five or six vamps were crashing a party at Wilson College. Gunn was less than ten minutes away, Wesley more than twenty. Room 918, Bonner Hall. Gunn would go straight in – he had crosses and holy water in the truck, enough for the college kids to hold the vamps off until Wesley arrived. The leader of the vamps was a blonde female. Elizabeth, Wesley thought. Low-cut blouse, heart-shaped locket. She had the invitation, she’d get the others in.</p>
<p>Gunn arrived just after the vamps, though it took him several minutes to be sure of that (working hard to blend in, to look like any other student with a heavy sports bag), to find someone who’d seen the blonde chick turn up, saying she’d met Jude at the pier, and she knew he hadn’t said, but friends were OK, right? Well, the blonde was over there with Shep. The others... Dunno. Looked like they hadn’t stuck together. Wow. Actual mingling. At a party and all.</p>
<p>That wasn’t mingling, it was infiltration. They were all around the room. Gonna be difficult. Gunn wanted to warn the kids, hand out crosses and holy-water, but the moment he tried there’d be someone yelling, “Vampires? Oh, man, what a joke!” and then that had to be five kids dead.</p>
<p>Wait for Wesley? But Wes would blow their cover for sure, Wes would never blend in here, even without the crossbows. So be ready to use the surprise? Get to the back of the room, between the two vamps who were closest together. Keep track of the other three. And when Wes appeared in the doorway, stake the first two from behind, and then keep the others too busy to have time to feed. He sent a text message to Wesley to go straight in with his crossbow, and then he started to move into position; casual, grabbing two beers on the way like he was threading through to join a friend.</p>
<p>He got his two vamps like he planned, and that and Wesley put the other three enough off-balance. So even with all the kids in the way, a whole roomful of hostages, the vamps never got close to playing it smart. Wesley got the blonde and the other nearest the door, and Gunn took the last.</p>
<p>Some of the kids had bruises, cuts from glass broken in the panic. And some were talking about suing Wesley and Gunn, and their asshole friends in the masks, who couldn’t have gone far. Who was it who’d put them up to such a fucking stupid stunt? Who?</p>
<p>Nothing they could do except offer to take the kids to hospital, then shrug and walk out. No one really tried to stop them (Wesley was slung with weapons), and no one followed them down to get the number of the truck or the car.</p>
<p>Wesley thought it was funny, the kids all so clear on what they hadn’t seen, no one, not even on an evening of beers, saying, “But how did they do that? I mean, where it looked like she turned to dust?” Stupid stunt, not worth thinking about. They lived in such a safe world and they’d been able to stay there, and Wesley wouldn’t want it any different.</p>
<p>Gunn laughed too, but as they were maintaining and restocking their weapons he felt like he was counting down the minutes, waiting for Wesley to close down again, like he did after training. But no, Wesley stayed relaxed, even said yes when Gunn offered him a beer. They sat on the couch and talked about college kids: what they were like in England, the Greek system, Matt.</p>
<p>Wesley had got back to normal. That was what he’d needed, not time or the right word from Gunn, but the chance to kill a couple of vamps, save a roomful of people. That simple. All he needed to remind him of all the other visions, how he’d devoted his life to saving people, risked his life over and over. Enough of that crap about feeling like a disease: he should feel like a cure, hundreds of people could tell him that, Gunn should have told him but Wesley remembered for himself now. And he was laughing and drinking beer and wanting to sit and talk to Gunn; and Gunn could feel the heat in the air between them, his skin buzzing with the pull towards Wesley. You’d think he’d be hard immediately, the wait had been so long, but instead it was a slow simmer, like the last stages of a good date.</p>
<p>“Another?” Wesley had drained his beer and looked about to get up.</p>
<p>Gunn had started planning for this five minutes ago. He turned to half-kneel on the couch and put his hand on Wesley’s stomach; and then his cock caught up, at the thought of the skin under the T-shirt and sliding his hand under. “I’d rather take you to bed.”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed and sank back and closed his eyes, but it wasn’t an “Oh, yes” sigh. Not an “Oh, no” sigh, either. Maybe “Oh, I don’t know”. And “I wish I’d had warning.” His cock knew, though, suddenly standing out plain against the corduroy.</p>
<p>Gunn rubbed with his fingertips, just slightly, feeling the skin of Wesley’s stomach yield and shift, and seeing the effect between Wesley’s legs. Wesley gave another of those sighs and jerked his head, frowning deeply. Impossible to tell what he was thinking, except that he was thinking hard.</p>
<p>“Or I could take you right here.” Almost a whisper, and Gunn slid his hand down and covered Wesley’s cock; and tasted sweet saliva gathering in his mouth: for kissing, for sucking, anything.</p>
<p>“No. No. Not here.” Wesley was pushing Gunn’s arm away. He was breathless.</p>
<p>“So say where. Anywhere. “</p>
<p>“Oh.” A long sigh, and Wesley stared at Gunn for five, ten seconds, then: “Get ready for bed, will you?”</p>
<p>“Don’t have to ask me twice.” Gunn was already off the couch. He took Wesley’s beer and put both bottles on the coffee table, then reached out for Wesley’s hand, to pull him to his feet.</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “I’ll get ready after you.”</p>
<p>When Gunn came out of the bathroom, Wesley was standing a few feet from the bathroom door. He was looking up at Angel on the screen, and he didn’t turn round for Gunn. Angel was stuck fast in the vision, same as he had been since they got back, calling out warnings about the female, trying to hide, then the next second throwing himself into the attack, roaring with fury.</p>
<p>Gunn put his hands on Wesley’s waist. Lightly, not pulling Wesley back even a fraction, making his cock keep a good inch away from Wesley’s ass. “English?” No response from Wesley. “You know he’ll still be there tomorrow. Y’got me ready now.”</p>
<p>Wesley put his hand over Gunn’s then slowly turned, like he was pulling himself around on Gunn’s arm. “You’ve been ready before, haven’t you? What have you been doing?”</p>
<p>What any guy would do. But maybe Wes wanted to hear him say it. “Jerking off. “ A nod of the head towards the bathroom. “In there.”</p>
<p>“What do you think about?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Stuff from here and there. Depends. Gettin’ you naked. What it was like when you had the dressing on your hand. A long rubdown. What if we’d said yes to Angel that time.”</p>
<p>“Do you think about... being angry with me? Wanting to... show me?”</p>
<p>” ‘cos it’s been so long?” Wesley shrugged, and Gunn shook his head. “Been through it myself. When things were bad with the crew. How’d I be angry? ‘n’ when I was jerkin’ off... Wouldn’t think it then anyway, defeat the point. What d’you want me to think about?”</p>
<p>A long sigh, and Wesley looked away for a few seconds. Very quietly, voice tense: “Loving me.”</p>
<p>“Hell, you got that,” and Gunn was pulling him close and then they were kissing. Wesley tasted of beer, and Gunn knew he must taste of mint to Wesley, and he liked that difference: the reminder of the evening, how they’d earned the wind-down on the couch, and the promise of bed.</p>
<p>“Here?” Gunn had his hand at the buckle of Wesley’s belt, thumb starting to ease the leather through, fingers pushing down between the trousers and the T-shirt. “Feels like we’re both ready.”</p>
<p>“No. No.” Wesley pulled away, panting, then nodded towards the bedroom. “In there. I need – In there.”</p>
<p>Gunn went in first, sat on the edge of the bed, and had his clothes off within half a minute. Then he turned the bedside light on, and knelt up on the bed to wait for Wesley.</p>
<p>“No. Please. Turn it off.” And Wesley had just drawn the drapes, too.</p>
<p>Gunn didn’t hesitate, but when the light was off and Wesley was sitting in his chair and unlacing his shoes, Gunn said, “What’s wrong? With the light.”</p>
<p>A pause, then: “Seeing you. It would be too much. I need... less.”</p>
<p>Gunn laughed. “Well, you’re damn fine yourself. Yeah, don’t need more than a tenth what you got.”</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t laugh back, just lay down on the bed. He’d only taken his shoes off but now he was releasing his belt, and now pulling the zipper down. Gunn felt his way over to kneel on either side of Wesley’s right leg, put his hands on Wesley’s hips ready to pull those godawful pants right off as soon as Wesley arched himself up.</p>
<p>“No. That’s enough.” Not even to mid-thigh. Just enough to let his cock out – which he was doing for himself. Gunn put his hand between Wesley’s legs, moved it up till it met Wesley’s hand; and at the first touch of the moist, tender skin, so yielding, over such hardness, he gave a tearing groan and threw himself down, sucking, licking, and dragging his teeth, too, over Wesley’s knuckles as he forced his tongue under Wesley’s fingers, needing to reach more, needing everything.</p>
<p>Wesley was making small sounds, half-surprise, all pleasure. He slowly pulled his hand away, over Gunn’s lips then up to his cheek; kept it there for a long time, like he needed to be near Gunn’s mouth, ride the movement of Gunn’s jaw, and then, when Gunn’s finger started pressing into him, he suddenly grabbed for the back of Gunn’s head and held tight. He was calling Gunn his darling, his love, his good, good Charles.</p>
<p>Gunn came very soon after Wesley, rubbing himself against Wesley’s leg, with Wesley still half-hard in his mouth, and Wesley’s ass (so hot, so eager) still clutching at his finger.</p>
<p>Wesley wouldn’t get undressed, he wouldn’t get into bed, not even when Gunn got cold enough to shiver. So Gunn got up and put on his robe, and then they fitted back together into the same kiss.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley wasn’t in the bed when Gunn woke on Sunday morning – he wasn’t even in the apartment. The car was out where he’d parked it the night before, his cellphone was on his desk. He hadn’t made coffee, and there was no beaker drying on the rack so he hadn’t fed Angel, either – though Angel didn’t look able to be fed, crouched in his corner, tearing at himself, banging his head against the wall.</p>
<p>So Wesley had either gone for a walk – just possible early on a fresh Sunday morning – or he was downstairs doing laundry. Gunn checked the laundry basket, and then headed straight down to the laundry room.</p>
<p>Not even the chair this time: Wesley was sitting on the floor with his back to the drier, hunched like Angel when Wesley was mad at him. He hadn’t been crying, but god it looked like he’d been hating himself. Angel did that loudly, enough to shake the room, but Wesley did it so quietly.</p>
<p>Gunn stood in the doorway for about a minute. He only had one new idea for what to say: to remind Wesley about all the people he’d saved, and he couldn’t imagine launching straight into that. Finally he went over and knelt down next to Wesley and said, “Are you thinkin’ what you’re usually thinkin’? Or’s this somethin’ else? You were – more like you used to be, last night. I thought maybe you’d worked something out.”</p>
<p>A long pause, then quietly, hard like a splinter: “I forgot. I let myself forget.”</p>
<p>“Wha’d’you forget?”</p>
<p>“What I really am. What I was – made for.”</p>
<p>Made for sitting on a cement floor. Getting up at dawn to wash his boyfriend’s come out of his clothes. “Sounds like you are thinkin’ the usual.”</p>
<p>A nod that was partly a shrug, and a turning away; all slight, like it didn’t matter to him, couldn’t matter to Gunn.</p>
<p>“So what’re you sayin’?” Gunn tried to keep his voice quiet, like he was asking some harmless question about English college kids. “That I’ll be jerkin’ off in the bathroom from now until... I dunno... we’re gettin’ sent out to save the grandkids of the guys from that party.” He took a deep breath and tried again for quiet. “Know that sounds like I’m... It’s not about me. ‘n’ of course you’ve took it hard, don’t wanna meet the guy who could just shrug it off, but...” A quick shake of the head. “I don’t think you forgot, last night, I think you remembered: that you’re a good man.” Wesley flinched and brought his hand up to his face, held it like he was shielding his eyes from Gunn. “You’re good, Wes. You’re brave and honest and you never count the cost, not to yourself, and you worry about the strangest shit – when it comes to keeping yourself straight, keeping other people straight. And everyone can see that. You’re well past due for givin’ yourself a break, for swearing off that crazy shit you been talkin’. And last night... Yeah, you were still kinda fucked up but you coulda made it a start. You don’t have to do this, man.” And then he sighed, shrugged, and stepped back to lean against the door and wait for Wesley’s reply. He’d give it five minutes, and then he’d go make coffee.</p>
<p>Less than half a minute, and Wesley slowly got to his feet. He turned, rested his hand on the top of the drier, and then started talking to some spot on the wall just above the washer. “I’d be glad to suck you off. Whenever you needed. But I couldn’t do it like a lover. So you might prefer to imagine...”</p>
<p>“Imagine!” Gunn had jerked away from the wall like it had given him a shock. “What’s it mean, then, when you call a man your ‘darling’? That he knows how you take your coffee? Or – What happened to you last night? What the hell’ve you been thinking? Why would you say that?”</p>
<p>Finally Wesley looked at him. Very slowly: “I can’t have... pleasure. I shouldn’t be – I shouldn’t have that freedom. When I look at what I am. What I’ve always been. The cost of that, to other people. If I count that cost…” He shook his head, over and over. “How could I let myself take anything?”</p>
<p>A long pause, then Gunn said, “What’re the three most fucked-up things about what you just said? That I’m thinkin’ right now? Know you’re smart enough to find ten, but I just want y’r best three.”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed and looked down at the washer, which was reaching the peak of a spin cycle. “That it doesn’t do anyone else any good, if I live like a monk, it doesn’t make up for anything. That I’m making you live like a monk too, when you’re the last person who deserves... And what about all the people I’ve helped, who’d be sending cases of champagne to our door every day, if only they knew our address.” Gunn had them in a different order, but he wouldn’t mark Wesley down for that. “That doesn’t...” Eyes back to Gunn. “Charles. I woke up. And I heard a car pull up outside and the doors slammed. And I imagined... If there’d been a trial. For me. They’d finally organised it, they’d finally decided I had to be – And they’d met, and they’d heard everything. I could imagine how they’d been when they passed judgement: hardly even angry, just sad. That I’d been allowed to –” A shudder, then he shook his head and swallowed. “That I’d been allowed to do so much damage for so long. And the sound of the car pulling up, that meant it was over, they were coming to take me away. To somewhere… where they could make sure there was nothing more I could ever do. Not just this morning. I imagine that almost every morning. At almost any sound from the street. And I’m always...”</p>
<p>“Disappointed. When they don’t break down the door.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “I’d have to explain, anyway. About Angel and the visions. That they couldn’t take me. But it’s what – It would be right. On so many levels.”</p>
<p>He’d fallen asleep in Gunn’s arms, and woken up wanting to be beaten senseless in a demon jail cell. So what else would you do, then, but get up and do laundry?</p>
<p>Gunn sighed and shrugged. “You made a mistake, Wes, but...” Another sigh. “I’m sick of saying that and you’re sick of hearing it. I’m going back up to make the coffee. And I’ll bring you one, don’t care if you want it or not. And sit in the chair, for God’s sake.”</p>
<p>A small smile, and Wesley nodded. “Thank you.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley said the vision hadn’t hit Angel particularly hard – not like the first vision he’d had after he started to become lucid again – but to watch Angel you’d think his mind had been thrown in a blender. Even Angelus was having hallucinations: of being surrounded by willing victims, and he had moments of seeming genuinely confused about how to deal with them.</p>
<p>They still hadn’t been able to feed Angel by the time they went to bed on Sunday night. Gunn was woken around two by the sound of Wesley moaning in one of his bad dreams. Gunn decided not to wake Wesley up but to wait for five minutes, see if the dream played itself out, and while he was waiting Angel started up too, yelling something about, “No, no, you don’t do that! You don’t make me,” and then he was banging on the wall by the door. Could take an hour for that to stop, so Wes could moan twice as loud now about being locked away, he still wouldn’t be the one keeping Gunn awake.</p>
<p>And then Angel screamed, in real, shocked pain, and there was a crackling sound before the scream that couldn’t have been made by Angel’s lungs or his fists, a sound that was wrong. Gunn leapt out of bed and ran into the living room, grabbing his robe on the way. Angel wasn’t on the screen. “Angel! Get away from the door. Go over and stand by your mattress.” Angel didn’t move. Gunn could hear his gasping breath, right by the door.</p>
<p>“What’s happening? What’s he doing?” Wesley had just come out of the bedroom.</p>
<p>“Think he’s burned himself. Sounded bad. Like he’s... I guess he thinks there’s guards in with him, like to hold him against the door. I told him to get back but he’s just standin’ there.”</p>
<p>“Angel. Can you hear me? You should go and lie down. It’s late. You should try to sleep.”</p>
<p>More breathing, then slow scraping noises against the wall, and finally, a muttering. “It doesn't – He’ll pretend. They pretend. He won’t – It won’t stop. Just in here.” Then he shouted, “You stop!” and he seemed to throw himself against the door. He held himself there, screaming, through the time it took Wesley to slide both bolts and yell at Gunn to get the net and the pikes and the chains and then Angel staggered back and fell to the ground.</p>
<p>“What we gonna do?” Wesley was waiting with the key in the lock, crossbow slung over his shoulder.</p>
<p>“Chain him between the plates. If we can get him over there. Otherwise... just chain him. We might have to wrap him in a blanket if we can’t stop him crawling back to the door.”</p>
<p>” ‘n’ if it’s Angelus?”</p>
<p>“You go in with the net. I’ll cover you. He won’t get out.”</p>
<p>Angel was slowly getting to his feet, giving small grunts of pain and effort. Wesley made ready to open the door and whispered, “Now. While he’s off-balance.” Gunn kicked the door open, which knocked Angel sprawling, threw the net over him then backed off nearly to the door to give Wesley a clear line and to size up what they were dealing with.</p>
<p>They were dealing with Angel naked, and if there was a break in the line of burns that stretched between his collarbones and his thighs, well, Gunn couldn’t see it. He’d burned both sides of his face, the right much worse than the left, and Gunn guessed that the left had been the first scream.</p>
<p>Angel’s cock... with the rough twine of the net lying across it, a knot, two knots. If Angel tried to get up, pulled the net taut... “Holy Christ.” Gunn breathed the words, trying not to imagine, and feeling the skin over half his body shiver and twist like it wanted to hide inside his bones. The guards had done this to Angel in hell. They must have. Even made him do it to himself, take his own clothes off? Which would mean that they’d had a threat of something worse.</p>
<p>Angel wasn’t trying to get up, he wasn’t struggling against the net; but he wasn’t lying rigid, trying not to move because of the pain. Instead he seemed... Relaxed couldn’t be right. Relieved? Like he knew it was over now, nothing more the guards could do to him. So he must know Wesley, even this deep in hell.</p>
<p>Wesley had come into the room, keeping the crossbow trained on Angel’s chest, and now he was standing a few feet from Angel’s head, just past the edge of the net. Angel had turned his head slightly towards Wesley, but not to look at him – couldn’t seem to look away from the open doorway. Ideas about escaping? Or was this another part of his hallucination: watching the guards leave?</p>
<p>“What do you think, Charles? I think we still need to chain him unless we want to stand watch over him all night. But you’d be the one who’d have to take the net off and get in range of him. What do you think of the risk?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged and took a step towards Angel. “Angel? How you doin’ with those burns? You know you’re safe now, don’t you? It’s over.”</p>
<p>No sign that Angel was hearing Gunn, but then he gave a long sigh and closed his eyes. Relief. Yeah, it was relief.</p>
<p>“That risk’s OK. But we gotta get him between the plates. Stop him gettin’ back to the door, like you said. No way I’m wrappin’ a blanket round those burns, not a sheet, nothin’.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “So how do we move him? I don’t think –” In a different voice: “Angel, can you stand up? I know it will hurt but Charles will help you. We need you to move so we can take proper care of you.” Nothing. Wesley pulled a face and said, “I suppose we’ll have to put a chain around his neck and drag him.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. I’ll bring everything in. Get it ready first.” Being out in the living-room gave Gunn another idea, but he didn’t say anything about it until he’d finished setting up the chains. “I just thought... If he’s not nauseous from the pain, he might be hungry enough that he’d follow me across to get fed.”</p>
<p>Gunn couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Wesley so relieved. When Lilah Morgan had called about the apartment, maybe. Or when Gunn had started finding them clients.</p>
<p>Angel was hungry, and the smell of the blood reached him, when he couldn’t even seem to hear his own name. Still a very tough few minutes, though: trying to stop him from hurting himself against the net; expecting the worst with every movement, for the pain to turn him savage. His hands were raw and blistered so Wesley held the beaker for him while he drank, and that was when Gunn fitted the chains to his neck, wrists and ankles, leaving enough slack between his wrists that he’d be able to lie easily on his back.</p>
<p>“It stopped. I made it stop. I can. In here.” A pause in his drinking, near the end. He did seem to be speaking to Wesley.</p>
<p>“Yes. It stopped. I think you’ve learned how to make it stop.”</p>
<p>Angel’s clothes were in a pile in the corner by the door, where he must have been standing when he was banging on the wall. Wesley gathered them up and put them in the laundry basket while Gunn was folding the net.</p>
<p>Angel didn’t like it when they left and closed the door, was complaining hard before Wesley had finished washing the beaker. “No. It has to be in here. With me. I can make it stop.”</p>
<p>Gunn thought they should leave Angel alone, at least give him a chance to settle down, but he didn’t argue hard when Wesley wanted to go back in and sit with him for a while. Angel was lying there with seeping burns on his cock, for Christ’s sake. And he’d been incredibly tough about all that, not one sign of feeling sorry for himself. So whatever was bothering him now, yeah, he deserved some attention, even Wesley stroking his hair. Gunn watched the screen from the kitchen while he was waiting for the kettle to boil for tea, wondering how many hours it would be before Angel would let Wesley leave.</p>
<p>It turned out to be less than ten minutes. Gunn had just decided that he would go back to bed, that Wesley would be safe even if he fell asleep in there, when Wesley came out with his tea not even started, saying that Angel had fallen asleep very suddenly, might even have switched off.</p>
<p>Gunn wanted to be held: he wanted help in calming himself down after seeing those burns and hearing those screams. He could ask Wesley, Wesley probably wouldn’t say no. But he might say “not as a lover”. Or something worse, something even more fucked up. And God knows what state Gunn would find him in the next morning. So he thought of Alonna, like she’d been three or fours years ago. Imagined telling her what he’d just been through with Angel. And her going, “Woah!” and “You mean he was -?” and then “Oh, Charles, you must be...” and hugging him and hugging him, like she needed it too, just from hearing the story.</p>
<p>That helped, did give him some of what he needed. Made him miss her, remember how they’d been able to tell each other everything - until the vamps had moved in. Strange sort of comfort, to be remembering all that. And how long had it been since he’d done any serious thinking about anything except Wesley and Angel?</p>
<p>“Helluva way to wake up, eh, Wes? Come out of a nightmare and find him like that. He’s just beat my worst ever dream.”</p>
<p>“You were having a nightmare?” Wesley sounded concerned, was raising himself up to look at Gunn, though he wouldn’t see much in this light.</p>
<p>“No. You were. Something about being locked in somewhere, I think. Y’don’t remember any of it?”</p>
<p>Wesley slumped back down. “I must have woken you up. I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Wouldn’t have lasted long. Sounded like one of your short ones. I’da been asleep again in half an hour.”</p>
<p>A pause. “Could I have woken Angel too? Was I making that much noise.?”</p>
<p>“Man. Who knows what he hears? What he sees, even. Don’t wanna know, anyone’s offerin’ me a choice.”</p>
<p>Angel was in hell for all of Monday. Gunn gagged him on Monday night before they went to bed, because he knew from what they’d heard during the day that he and Wesley could forget about sleeping if Angelus appeared. The burns had healed a lot – maybe ten times faster than with a human – but they were still frightening. Gunn put thick gauze between Angel’s face and the gag, and he was as gentle as he knew how to be, with Wesley holding up Angel’s head and making his soothing noises. They didn’t speak to one another as they were getting ready for bed, didn’t meet each other’s eyes, but when they’d been in bed for about ten minutes, both on their backs the same as Angel, Wesley’s hand moved to cover Gunn’s hand – just a faint pressure through the bedding – and Wesley said, “We had to do it, Charles. The burns will be healed by the morning. And he’ll forget it all just as quickly.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Just wishin’ I could forget.”</p>
<p>Angel was lying quietly when they got up the next morning, awake but not cringing. Possibly lucid, definitely able to be fed, and Gunn went in to remove the gag while Wesley heated the blood. Now Angel just looked like he had bad sunburn plus maybe an allergy to a soap or something. The gauze lifted away smoothly, no sticking or snagging.</p>
<p>“Thank you.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded. “Good to see you’re OK. Don’t wanna do that again, someone with those burns.”</p>
<p>“What did he do? Did he try to escape?” Angelus. He thought it was all punishment for Angelus.</p>
<p>“Looked like that. He didn’t get far.”</p>
<p>Gunn started unlocking the chains, taking the neck first, and he was dealing with Angel’s hands when Wesley arrived with the blood. Gunn was kneeling with his back to the door and had all his attention on reaching over Angel to free his left hand, but he knew the moment that Wesley came into Angel’s field of view, because Angel gasped and the next second Gunn felt something cold and hard pressing against his forearm, and that was Angel’s cock. Gunn gasped himself and dropped the keys as he jerked back; the keys landed on Angel’s stomach, just above his navel.</p>
<p>“What’s – Oh.” Wesley had seen and was blushing, and Angel was rolling onto his side to hide against the wall. The keys slid onto the floor but Gunn was over the shock of that touch now, and he reached in, found the keys, then unlocked Angel’s left hand by feel.</p>
<p>“Nothing to worry about, Angel. Y’know we’ve seen it all before. More you help me with this, quicker we can get out and leave you alone.” Angel didn’t roll back, but he did let Gunn have his right arm.</p>
<p>Wesley put the beaker down on the floor. “I’ll get you some clothes, Angel.” He came back when Gunn was gathering up the chains, and he’d brought Gunn’s robe as well as a change of clothes. “This might be easier on your skin. Just for today. Call when you want us to take away the beaker.”</p>
<p>Wesley turned off the screen then made coffee while Gunn was putting the chains away. “I’m sorry about your robe. I just got the idea and then...” A shrug. “I knew yours would fit him.”</p>
<p>“No problem.” Not really true, but his problem wasn’t with Wesley, and he’d deal with it smooth enough. Angel wearing his robe, jerking off and thinking the horniest, red-haze thoughts about Wesley the way he looked right now: six-days growth of beard, and needing a haircut, and the bad sleep showing in his face, and those clothes that looked like they’d never been new. Gunn envied Angel for that instant reaction he’d have had himself a month ago. Envied Angel for having no idea how much it hurt these days, to be in love with Wesley, and for being someone that Wesley would bother to pretend with, to try to be normal with. Angel was in there wearing Gunn’s robe, maybe thinking he’d do better for Wesley than Gunn, that Wesley just needed to sleep.</p>
<p>When Gunn came back that evening from a couple of hours of legwork, he found Wesley in with Angel, reading, and learned that his robe was drying downstairs. The next morning, Wesley got a haircut for his meeting with Lilah Morgan, and on Thursday, while Gunn was at the beach-house with Matt and Grouw, Wesley started reading again, properly: one of Angel’s books, some deadly-looking European history thing. Gunn, personally, would rather stare at the wallpaper but Wesley was reading on the couch, and not even with a notepad near to pretend he was reading for work.</p>
<p>By the next week, he was asking real questions about Gunn’s cases, not just his schedule for the day but more and more details and soon he was making suggestions, though always like he was asking Gunn’s opinion, getting clear on something Gunn had just said, and Gunn worked his ass off to play along, act like Wes was some clueless civilian who didn’t even realise these clients of Gunn’s were demons. The hardest part for Gunn was keeping the affectionate smile off his face and stopping himself from going over and kissing Wesley. It felt like flirting, all the hints and sighs, the thing between them that they wouldn’t name, had agreed not even to look at, all their attention focused on steering each other close enough that they could feel it brush against their clothes. And Wesley was so good at this, he took it so seriously.</p>
<p>Gunn kept the smile off his face mostly by making a list in his mind of that day’s evidence that Wesley still had a long way to go. He still slammed shut after training with the crew, he’d been buying more of those damn thrift-shop clothes, but the surest thing every day was the dreams, which were getting more and more violent. Gunn hadn’t taken any damage yet, not with the layers of bedding between them, but he’d started sleeping with his back towards Wesley because his face had been feeling very exposed.</p>
<p>The dreams were usually short and Gunn couldn’t tell much about what was happening. Wesley fought back in about half (with grunts and snarls, but no words), and in the others he was trying to escape, sometimes from Angel (or with Angel?), and Gunn thought that some of the dreams were about being in Angel’s chains, and some of the screams were about burning. The rest must be from Wesley’s past, or from nowhere. The times he shouted, “You know it’s rape,” Gunn knew he was back as far as that school (but finally angry about it, and Gunn thought, “I taught him that.”). His dreams about Gunn came from nowhere and were almost peaceful, never above a moan (“No, Charles. You don’t want to hurt me. It’s wrong. Stop. You can’t.” And the Gunn in Wesley’s dream always did stop.).</p>
<p>Wesley said what he always said now: that he didn’t know he was having nightmares. Even when he fell off the bed trying to escape, he said he didn’t remember anything, had no idea why he’d woken up with his heart pounding. Gunn described some of the most violent dreams (not the rape, not the ones with him in them), but Wesley just shrugged and said it sounded like a vision, and offered to sleep on the couch.</p>
<p>“No. Ain’t that bad. Not every night.” A lie, like Wesley was lying about not remembering. Would be good, to sleep right through the night. But if he let Wesley go to the couch, when would he ever get him back?</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Angel was watching Gunn. He didn’t usually do more than glance at him during feeding, but now he was staring, though trying to be subtle, make it part of the drinking and take no more than a few seconds at a time. That must be for Wesley, because he wasn’t subtle at all when Gunn was standing guard on him in the shower. The staring in the shower would give Angel an erection (or a start on one, anyway), but Gunn knew Angel too well to take that personally; Angel was planning something, or working on a new theory to do with Wesley, like the time he’d had so much to say to Gunn about shower-gel and muscles, and then had got Wesley mad by making stupid jokes about the book and Wesley’s arm. After the second shower, Gunn thought of warning Wesley, but what would he really be saying? “The next crazy, unpredictable thing he does... Might be a few days earlier than if he wasn’t staring at me.”? You lived with Angel, you were always expecting something.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>On the first Wednesday in November, Angel didn’t wake up until after Wesley had left for his meeting with Lilah Morgan. Gunn hadn’t fed Angel on his own since Angel got lucid again after the vision of the vampires and the college kids, and when he went in with the blood Angel looked surprised and disappointed, and then like he’d just worked something out, something serious.</p>
<p>“Are they talking to him?” Angel had taken the beaker, but hadn’t made any move to drink.</p>
<p>“He’s got a meeting. Yeah.”</p>
<p>Angel nodded slowly, took a step back and then drank very slowly indeed, doing his usual feeding routine of glancing at Gunn for about two seconds in every ten. Gunn put his hands in his pockets and waited.</p>
<p>Angel finished and Gunn held his hand out, but Angel shook his head, frowned, then said suddenly, “Don’t leave him. You’re the only one who’s ever made him happy with sex.”</p>
<p>What? What the fuck? “What the – Where’d’you – Where the hell d’you get that? You thinkin’ he told you?”</p>
<p>Angel just shook his head again. “Don’t leave him.”</p>
<p>“Who said I was ever gonna? Where d’you get that? ‘n’ what the fuck d’you think you know about... Leave him? Why would you think that? Couldn’t’ve got it from watchin’ me. Why d’you say that? You even know why?”</p>
<p>A long pause, with Angel looking wary but determined. “I know he won’t let you. You want – more.”</p>
<p>“What, you smell that?” Gunn wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not. He took a moment to weigh both sides, still wasn’t sure, and gave a deep sigh. “So you asked him and he told you it was none of your business. But that’s never stopped you when you’re dreamin’ up theories.” Helluva theory, though, Gunn about to leave and somehow having great sex with Wesley at the same time. “H’ve you been botherin’ him with this? Tellin’ him I’m gonna leave?”</p>
<p>Angel looked like he didn’t know what to say, and he shrank back slightly. Gunn gave another sigh, exasperated, then snatched the beaker from Angel’s hand. “I’m not going to leave. How could I? You don’t say that again. I don’t wanna hear it, and you never say it to him.”</p>
<p>Gunn expected Angel to resent the order: he was looking for that as the sign he’d got through. But instead Angel nodded, smiled just a shade and said, “He’ll get better. He thinks he won’t, but he will.”</p>
<p>“Yeah.” Gunn wanted to say, “We’ll help him,” but he didn’t know how they would. He and Angel looked at one another for a few moments, then Gunn turned to leave. At the door he said, “He’ll be back in a couple of hours,” and when he next looked up at the screen he saw that Angel had settled himself against the wall with the books.</p>
<p>Don’t leave him. That must have been what was behind the staring. Angel sizing him up. Trying to guess how close he was to packing his bags and getting turned on because... then he might have a chance with Wesley?</p>
<p>But he didn’t want Gunn to go. He wanted Wesley to get back to having sex with Gunn. That was what he’d been saying, wasn’t it?</p>
<p>Don’t leave him. Gunn shook his head over and over, part of the amazement that he was even trying to guess how Angel’s mind that thrown that up. Angel couldn’t have got it from watching Gunn, because Gunn knew he’d behaved just the same as usual in front of Angel. But maybe from listening to Wesley’s nightmares or to Gunn telling Wesley he was fucked up. Or from noticing they hardly talked any more, they never laughed together. And if that was gone then what did they have?</p>
<p>Yeah. Maybe. Maybe Angel could have got it from that. When he had nothing to do but listen and imagine and think about the change in Wesley. Ask Wesley about his new clothes, and you could read a lifetime of bad news into that expression.</p>
<p>Angel had started the staring over a week ago, once he’d got lucid again after the burning. He would have told Wesley his new theory in that time, wouldn’t he? Told him indirectly, at least, through asking strange questions about him and Gunn. And Wesley would have said... Well, obviously not enough to reassure Angel.</p>
<p>Angel didn’t want Gunn to leave, he didn’t want Wesley all to himself. He wanted Gunn to stay and make Wesley happy. Like he’d said right at the beginning, when Gunn had still thought he was human. It wasn't important if he liked Gunn or not, if Gunn was making his life more difficult. “Wesley smells different.” “He’s happy.” Angel had lost all of his memories of that time, but he was still the same person.</p>
<p>Wesley came back with lunch for both of them, and with another thrift-shop bag (a grey, long-sleeved top with a couple of buttons at the neck, and a pale-green cotton sweater). Angel seemed to be asleep again, lying on the mattress with a book open under his arm.</p>
<p>“He’s been reading while I was out? Did you manage to feed him?”</p>
<p>Gunn just nodded then, but they sat down and ate their lunch together, and towards the end he said, “Y’know Angel’s been starin’ at me the last week? Y’seen him sneakin’ looks during feedin’? Well, today he said...” Gunn paused and frowned. “Been wonderin’ what he’s said to you. If he’s tried to warn you. ‘n’ how you’d...” A shrug. “Did you know he thought I was gonna leave you?”</p>
<p>Wesley looked shocked, then swallowed. Almost in a whisper: “What did he say?”</p>
<p>“He said, ‘Don’t leave him.’ Said it more than once. ‘n’ said some stuff about the sex. Like... that’s why I’d leave.” Wesley was frozen with horror. Gunn reached out and touched his hand, about to tell him how wrong Angel had been, but Wesley snatched his hand away, and now Wesley was looking even more wary than Angel had looked. “Wes, what’s...” Gunn shook his head, out of ideas about what was going on. “You never even thought it before? Or he did warn you but he was never supposed to bring it to me?”</p>
<p>Now Wesley had another of Angel’s expressions on his face: of having no idea what to say, which was how Angel had looked when Gunn had asked if he’d been warning Wesley. It wasn’t guilt, and he’d seen guilt from both of them often enough. It wasn’t being stubborn, it wasn’t stonewalling, it was blankness. Not able to find any reaction because the question just didn’t connect – it was too far from the truth.</p>
<p>So... Wesley had thought it before, about Gunn leaving but not because Angel had warned him. And the way Wesley had looked wary, the way he’d asked in a whisper what Angel had said…</p>
<p>“You told him, didn’t you? You told him I was gonna leave. You told him weeks ago.” Guilt, a flood of guilt. And not wary any more: downright scared. “When, Wes? When d’you tell him? ‘n’ for Christ’s sake why?”</p>
<p>Wesley closed his eyes hard. “I can’t remember.”</p>
<p>“Don’t make me tell you to stop fucking lying. Or d’you want me to wait and ask him?”</p>
<p>Wesley looked up at the screen, then quickly down at the table. “I really can’t remember when. Maybe a few days before the vision. But – It was always obvious that I should make you leave. That you shouldn’t waste yourself. But I’m not strong enough. I couldn’t face…”</p>
<p>You’d die if I left. The visions would kill you. Words that Gunn could never speak, would never want to. And of course that wasn’t what Wesley had meant about being strong.</p>
<p>“You know I love you?” Wesley nodded, gaze still on the table. “Then you know why you’re wrong with all of that. But why’d you tell him? You didn’t try to sort it out with me, find out my side. But you told him. Is there anything you wouldn’t tell him?”</p>
<p>“He – He understands.”</p>
<p>And I don’t? “So what did he say? About me leaving.” Probably not that it was fucked up, or that Wesley was half-crazy from shock and guilt. Restful. Angel played it restful.</p>
<p>“He asked what we did together, what we talked about. What you had left, now that I was... If we weren’t really together.”</p>
<p>So Angel knew about the jerking off in the bathroom. Another explanation for his hard-ons in the shower. A long conversation that. A serious conversation between close, close friends. Gunn imagined them sitting against the wall, the book on Wesley’s knee forgotten almost immediately. And other days when they didn’t even need to talk. They were alike in a lot of ways, they understood.</p>
<p>“Do you let him hold you?” Not jealous, just wanting to know how much difference it made to Wesley, whatever it was that Angel managed to do. Gunn expected Wesley to sigh and shrug and say “Sometimes” – like the time Gunn had thought they were having sex – but instead Wesley blushed and shuddered and closed his eyes.</p>
<p>So that was “Always”. At the very least, it was “Always”.</p>
<p>“OK, Wes. Guess I asked the wrong questions again. Landed way short. What should I have asked, to be dead on?” More blushing, and then some squirming in which Wesley pushed his chair back. “It’s as bad as it looks?” Angel, seeing Wesley for the first time since the vision, gasping and turning rock-hard in seconds.</p>
<p>Wesley turned his head sharply to the side, then opened his eyes and looked at Gunn past the sides of his glasses. On a sigh: “Yes,” and he swallowed hard.</p>
<p>Gunn clenched his jaw over and over, taking five deep breaths. Finally: “You got an excuse? ‘It’s all for his sake, poor Angel.’ ‘n’ of course you thought it would be over in a week. Y’know, all the excuses you can’t find for fucking me!”</p>
<p>“He – He hurts me. I can ask him to do that. It’s simple for him.”</p>
<p>That was an excuse? That was supposed to be telling Gunn it was OK? There was too much Gunn needed to say (needed to shout), but he started with, “What does he do?” and his voice was tight and low.</p>
<p>“Now he just holds me down. He’s rough.”</p>
<p>“He rapes you.”</p>
<p>“That’s what we call it. What we both call it.”</p>
<p>“Every day.” Gunn had been out for at least two hours every day. Wesley nodded. “Since when? When did it start?” Gunn couldn’t imagine how it could ever start. Not his Wesley.</p>
<p>A long sigh, and Wesley turned his head back to look properly at Gunn. “The Saturday. The Saturday after. You’d gone out to call all our clients. He heard me crying. I told him not to worry, that nothing was wrong but he wouldn’t accept that and he took his clothes off and threatened to burn himself to get me to open the door. I went in and I told him what I’d done, what I knew I was, and he offered to kill me.”</p>
<p>“He what?”</p>
<p>Wesley carried on like Gunn hadn’t spoken. “I said no but talking about it excited him, and he was still naked so we could both see how he was reacting, and we talked about what he was. After a while he did make a move to hold me, and when I told him that it had to be rape, he – That wasn’t a problem for him.”</p>
<p>The first Saturday. When Wesley had gone out to the grocery store for Gunn’s curry, and had come back with two bags of second-hand clothes. Saying the man who Gunn had fallen in love with was a shell, saying he couldn’t pretend any more.</p>
<p>“You saying you’d let me fuck you every day if I called it rape? Made it rough enough?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “I don’t want to see you like that. You’re not like that. You’re good. Angel and I... we’re lost, it doesn’t matter what we do.”</p>
<p>“It matters to me! You ever think about me? Or you just think, ‘He’s gonna leave, anyway. Nothin’ holdin’ me back.’ God! Can’t be a minute goes by when I don’t think about you, want what’s best for you.”</p>
<p>“I know. I see it and I admire you more than ever, I love you more than ever. But there’s no best for me, Charles. I need to be treated for what I am and that’s what Angel does. It gives me… It gives me faith in the world. That there might really be a balance of natural justice.”</p>
<p>” ‘Treated for what you are.’ You’re out of your mind with guilt, that’s what you are. You’re crazier than he is, right now. ‘n’ you’re that way ‘cos you want to be. There’s a way to make it worse, you’ll find it, you’ll fucking write your name on it. ‘n’ you think he’s different from me, that he agrees with the shit you come out with, but he’s just going along with it, it’s his way of keepin’ you close while he waits for you to get better. Yeah. He told me you’re gonna get better. So he knows y’re fucked up right now.”</p>
<p>“Yes. We’ve talked about it. About his experience of avoiding the world. He tells me the stages in the hundred years that it took him, the different ways in which he fought the distractions. Sometimes I think he’s waiting. At other times I think he’s warning me.”</p>
<p>There was nothing Gunn could say that would make any impression on Wesley. What could you do with someone who wouldn’t even really defend himself, who didn’t want you to believe that he was still a good person? – if you’d just give him a chance to prove it, he’d make up for everything. Wesley hadn’t even bothered to think of what would happen when Gunn found out.</p>
<p>So what would happen?</p>
<p>Well, Gunn would have to do something to both of them, he would have to. If he didn’t, what would that make him? God, after all those times being jealous over almost nothing, the hurting he’d felt then, the twisting anger. He should be in there now, holding Angel against the door, not gonna stop until... Until he reached the screams that said that Angel simply couldn’t believe that this was possible. Until Wesley’s voice was broken from pleading for his vampire. Gunn was entitled after what they’d done. But instead...</p>
<p>He got up and went over to Angel’s door. Wesley gasped and jumped to his feet, and was only a second too late in trying to stop Gunn from taking the key.</p>
<p>“No! You can’t blame him. He wanted – It was me.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. I’ll remember that. For when I’ve stopped counting to ten.” Or a thousand. Or a million. However long he was going to feel just sad and sidelined and out of his depth. He put the key in his pocket. “It’s over. You don’t get to see him again.”</p>
<p>A pause, then Wesley nodded slowly. “Of course. Thank you.”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Yeah. I’m going out. Had enough of the both of you.”</p>
<p>“What if he gets a vision?”</p>
<p>Another shrug, while Gunn was picking up his jacket. “He talks, doesn’t he? ‘s enough with Angelus.”</p>
<p>Gunn drove to the beach, walked for a couple of miles, then sat for a long time, mostly with his eyes closed. Would he leave? If there weren’t any visions, if he could leave, would he?</p>
<p>No. No, he probably wouldn’t. Not over this. Wesley thought he didn’t understand but he did. He understood the guilt and the despair, and that it might be easier (yeah, even restful) just to give up on yourself, think nothing but the worst. He couldn’t agree, he had to put the other side, but he did understand. And it meant something to him that Wesley had been trying to protect him, that Wesley had gone to Angel because he didn’t want to take that need to someone he loved. That must be why he didn’t feel jealous, or like he was being used, made a fool of. A bad time, a terrible time, but this was still where he was meant to be.</p>
<p>On the way back to the truck he remembered there was training that evening, and he called Rondell to say not to expect them.</p>
<p>“You got a tip-off?”</p>
<p>“Somethin’s come up, yeah. Should be OK for Sunday, though.” If he was gonna suddenly get mad with Wesley, it should’ve happened by Sunday. Till then... He didn’t trust himself to watch Wesley at his trick of putting on a front for the crew, not while he had a sword in his hands and too many questions about the front that Wesley had been putting on for him.</p>
<p>“Cool. Hey, we’re startin’ a new class for Anne. You got any time for it? Can see you’re comin’ up with more ideas than ever. Good to keep things fresh.” Yeah, he’d learned a lot in the year, more than the crew. Some from Angel, some from Wesley (but Wesley had learned everything from Angel), but mostly from the duals. Gunn said sure, he’d do the class and they talked about times and plans. When they were done Gunn was about to hang up when Rondell said, “ ‘s weird to have you back. Y’know, first few months was sure we’d never see you again. Took some bets on where you’d move to when it didn’t work out. ‘cos, hell, look at him!” Then quickly: “Back then, man. This is back then. When we thought we didn’t know you at all.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I – I coulda played that smoother.”</p>
<p>“Nah, clean break. But turns out we did know you, you’re just the same, and he – I could kinda see his cool, I guess, after the theatre, even when he was still actin’ so damn British. But now you got him to loosen up, dress like he’s finally, y’know, in the same time-zone... Never thought I’d say it about a white guy with glasses, but he’s definitely cool.”</p>
<p>Gunn managed to laugh. “You want me to tell him that?” But that was a no.</p>
<p>When Gunn had hung up, he had to fight the urge to throw the phone at the nearest rock. Loosen up! Jesus! Saying that he’d got Wesley to “loosen up”, like he’d dragged Wesley along to the thrift shop and pushed him inside. Rondell was looking at a nervous fucking breakdown (near as dammit), and he thought what he saw was “cool”.</p>
<p>It was past five and Gunn wasn’t nearly ready to go home. There was a movie theatre in Manhattan Beach, there had to be something he could watch. “Memento” was the next film starting, and he didn’t hate the idea. He got a soda and a hotdog, and just before he went in he called Wesley and told him that he’d cancelled training. He hung up before Wesley could ask where he was, when he’d be back, if Wesley would even have tried.</p>
<p>Strange film. Kept him thinking, didn’t try to make him laugh – which was good. And maybe anything he’d seen right then would’ve reminded him somehow of Wesley and Angel, but the guy did look like Wesley. Such a thin face, and so uptight. And the stubble. Afterwards Gunn couldn’t remember if the guy had been wearing glasses or not, which said to Gunn that he should have been. A haunted man, too. Something in his past that wouldn’t let him go, that shut him off from everything else in the world. Gunn had wanted to hold him, to bring him back into the world for just five minutes, show him that there was more. It would mean something, even if he knew throughout those five minutes that the damage to the man’s brain would make him forget what Gunn had showed him, and almost immediately. And that was Angel, that was what Wesley went through with Angel.</p>
<p>Gunn thought about the Mexican restaurant, Wesley explaining why Angel couldn’t go on patrol with the crew (“Sometimes he doesn’t know who I am.”), and Gunn thinking they must be lovers, and Wesley laughing so hard (“He’d never think of me like that.”). It should probably make him feel bitter, like he’d been tricked, but instead it reminded him again why he wasn’t going to leave. Wesley was worth it; and whatever he and Angel had together, it wasn’t nearly enough to make Wesley happy.</p>
<p>After the film Gunn thought he might go home, maybe read or something for the rest of the evening, depending what mood Wesley was in. He was near the beach-house, though, and he hadn’t seen Matt for weeks, so he called to invite himself around for just half an hour. He caught Matt on his way out, but he was on his way out to Caritas, and to meet Grouw, so Gunn should definitely come along.</p>
<p>Matt and Grouw were friends again. Not in the same way, because it wasn’t the same without Piriti. They didn’t sing, or not while Gunn was there, but they did talk a lot about what they might sing, when they felt right about it. Grouw had seen Piriti at the weekend – that is, he’d seen him turn and dive into the nest at the first sight of Grouw’s car. Solito had told Grouw that Piriti had gotten rid of his pager, that he didn’t want to talk to anybody. More than that: he started shaking at the idea of meeting anyone new, having any stranger even see him, because anyone out there could be another Barney.</p>
<p>“I said I just wanted to help, we all did. But he’s not ready. Solito thinks he’ll be like this for months.”</p>
<p>Gunn said, “How’s Solito doing? ‘s tough on him?”</p>
<p>Grouw shrugged. “I guess. Seems older. Acts older than Piriti now, when he was always...” Another shrug. “Wes still bad?” Gunn just nodded, and neither Grouw not Matt asked anything more.</p>
<p>Gunn got home just before eleven. Wesley had turned the armchair to face the door, and looked like he’d done nothing for hours except sit and wait. He was getting to his feet when Gunn opened the door, and his expression said that he’d do anything, as soon as he had the first clue about what Gunn wanted.</p>
<p>Angel was in his corner, starting to stand up, moving very slowly like he was preparing himself for something bad.</p>
<p>“You tell him what happened? Tell him it’s over?” Wesley nodded. “So what’d he say?”</p>
<p>A pause. “He wanted to know what you were going to do to him. If you would do it yourself or have the others... I said it wouldn’t be the others but he’s... He’s been having the hallucinations.”</p>
<p>Good. He should. “What about the door? He try to make you open it? He got burns under that shirt?”</p>
<p>“He – I managed to make him believe me in time. That I couldn’t open it.”</p>
<p>About what Gunn had expected. He gave a grunt and went straight to get the chains. He wasn’t going to let Angel disturb his sleep again.</p>
<p>“Go in the bedroom. Shut the door. You don’t get any chance to see each other.” Wesley went, looking almost relieved, and then Gunn took the key from his pocket and unlocked Angel’s door.</p>
<p>Angel was afraid of him. Gunn liked that. Though Angel had to know he was stronger than Gunn, faster. If he decided to put up a fight, there would be no contest.</p>
<p>“Move your mattress over by the wall.” The wall with the bolt-plates. “Not right against it. Leave about a foot.”</p>
<p>But Angel never did fight. When they had confrontations – and there hadn’t been many, not really – the most he’d do was flare up for a few seconds, and then he’d retreat. Angry, but never with a plan.</p>
<p>Well, he knew it was hopeless. He’d never get out, and anything he tried, he’d pay for hard. The guards from his time in a real hell had made him give up hope, and Gunn just got the benefit of what they’d done to him.</p>
<p>“Lie face-down with your hands by your sides. No, not behind your back, you’re not getting a shower. Down by your sides.”</p>
<p>He was only chaining Angel’s hands, not his feet or his neck, and he gave him room enough to lie however he wanted, to draw if he got a vision, or even to sit up. Gunn had no idea when or how he might decide to let Angel out of the chains. Maybe once Angel had shown that he’d learned (or forgotten?); and there was nothing he could do to force Wesley to open the door. Or maybe there’d be a point where Gunn would start to feel pity, when he’d be willing to take on the work of chaining him again every evening, gambling on his state of mind.</p>
<p>Gunn got off the mattress and picked up the gag from the floor. He wasn’t going to use it after all; if Angel got a vision, Gunn wanted the option of being able to deal with it without having to open the door. “You can move now if you want.”</p>
<p>Angel lifted his head slightly towards Gunn, then shifted onto his back, almost in one movement. They looked at one another. Angel wasn’t scared any more.</p>
<p>“Y’think I’m gonna go easy on you? ‘cos I’ve only done y’r hands? You don’t know me.”</p>
<p>Slowly: “You’ll do what you need to do. What you should do.”</p>
<p>A long silence, then Gunn said suddenly, “What’s the worst thing about what you did with him?”</p>
<p>Angel frowned and sighed, dragged his head from side to side, and got an erection. Finally: “I never tried to make him stop. I acted as if... It was.”</p>
<p>“You said you’d kill him. You think about it.”</p>
<p>Angel closed his eyes for several seconds, then: “I’d break his neck.”</p>
<p>“And then you’d fuck his corpse!”</p>
<p>Supposed to be too much, supposed to provoke, but Angel had got here long before Gunn, and forgotten the view from the other side. He just shook his head. “Afterwards... There wouldn’t be... I don’t know.”</p>
<p>Gunn fought hard not to imagine. His breath and his hands shuddered, and the gag creaked in his grasp. “Is this... Do you love him?” Meaning: is this the only way you love? Is this all you know how to do?</p>
<p>“I can’t.”</p>
<p>Angel couldn’t love Wesley. So the things Gunn had thought he’d seen, they hadn’t meant anything. Another shaking breath, then: “Have you ever thought you could?” Not just asking about loving Wesley now, but about loving anyone.</p>
<p>“He knows I’m a monster.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. I guess he does.” A long sigh. “OK. You want to know what I’m going to do?” A flicker of fear, and Angel nodded. “I’m not going to gag you, I’m going to leave you. I don’t know when I’ll be back. You can imagine anything you want.” Dream, that is, or hallucinate, but Angel wouldn’t know that.</p>
<p>Wesley was sitting slumped on the edge of the bed, just opposite the door. He didn’t stand up when Gunn came in, maybe he slumped even lower. Gunn sat next to him, put a hand on his shoulder then slid it slowly down to his waist, then took Wesley’s hand, put it on his own thigh, and held it there.</p>
<p>Wesley sighed and leaned against him, gripping hard on his thigh. “I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I know. So what’s gonna change, Wes, now it’s over? What you got for me?”</p>
<p>On another sigh: “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever known.”</p>
<p>“I want you in our bed. I want to get to hold you. ‘n’ I know why that bothers you, but this isn’t about what you want and think you shouldn’t have, it’s about what I want and fucking deserve. You gonna do that?”</p>
<p>A pause. “I don’t know about sex. About our kind of sex. It makes me feel too much. I couldn’t convince anyone that it was just about you.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, well, I didn’t say sex, because right now I’m too angry with you. Don’t trust myself to – Don’t wanna be like him. ‘n’ don’t tell me I couldn’t or he wasn’t angry or... I don’t wanna know, don’t wanna think about what he was, what he wasn’t. It’s too close, he’s too close. Hafta at least wait until he’s forgotten it ever happened. Know you’ll still be – But that’s what it’s about when it’s about me. So you saying yes to the rest?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>Gunn turned both of the bedside lights on as soon as he came in from the bathroom, before he started getting undressed. He wanted to see as much as he could of Wesley from the moment that Wesley came in. Maybe they hadn’t agreed on that exactly, but that was what Gunn meant by having Wesley back in their bed: having everything like the way it used to be.</p>
<p>Gunn had never seen Wesley getting out of his thrift-shop clothes before. Jackets and shirts used to slide easily off his arm under gravity, but the cotton sweater was a long sequence of wriggling and tugging, and he had to take his glasses off, and at the end he had to use his teeth. Gunn offered to help, but Wesley grunted a no.</p>
<p>Gunn had been concentrating on Wesley’s face and on Wesley’s hand clutching the sweater, and he didn’t see the bruises and scratches until Wesley was sitting on the bed and bending to take off his shoes. And then the chinos were off and Gunn was kneeling up and swearing, and fighting the urge to reach over and fit his hands to the clear prints on Wesley’s hips. Another clear print on his thigh, and that was probably another, nearly faded, half-hidden by a long scratch. Yes, it had been every day. Angel didn’t just hold him down, he slammed him against the wall, against the door. Didn’t hit him though. Probably. Didn’t bite him.</p>
<p>” ‘n’ I thought you were livin’ like a monk. Actin’ like you were always on duty. You were just coverin’ up.”</p>
<p>“It was all...” Wesley sighed. “It was all part of the same thing.”</p>
<p>Wesley covering up. Wesley making him put the light out, drawing the curtains. Wesley planning, to keep what he wanted, when he talked like there was nothing left for him except waiting for the worst to happen.</p>
<p>“Would you have stopped? If he’d made you?”</p>
<p>Wesley looked surprised, then puzzled. “I wouldn’t have had much choice.”</p>
<p>“Did you enjoy it?”</p>
<p>“I thought you didn’t want to know.”</p>
<p>Which made that a yes, but fair point. He didn’t want to know, he shouldn’t be asking. He lay down again and pulled back the covers on Wesley’s side. “Come on. Get in.”</p>
<p>Wesley settled against him, head on his chest. Gunn hardly ever thought: “If Wesley had a left arm...” but now he found himself thinking that and: “... how would he be holding me now?” It would be a way of telling if this was any kind of relief for Wesley, if he could admit that he needed this. Wesley was tense at first, but then so was Gunn. Wesley was the first to speak, after about ten minutes. “Did it help to go out today? To get away. Did it help you?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Yeah, it helped.” He told Wesley where he’d been, about the film, seeing Matt and Grouw; but he didn’t give any hint of the things he’d been thinking during those hours. Wesley asked about Piriti and about how they’d treated Gunn at Caritas. “Didn’t do more than watch me, see how I handle myself. Then they forget me.” Gunn thought he knew how Wesley had spent the day: talking to Angel, listening to Angel, and wondering if Gunn was going to come back at all.</p>
<p>Angel was moving in his chains. Just trying to get comfortable, Gunn thought, not struggling. At each sound he imagined what Angel might be doing – and he was imagining him naked. And then he was imagining Angel’s hands on Wesley, and knowing exactly where, because of those bruises.</p>
<p>Too angry. Far too angry to do more than hold Wesley like this. Not gripping, not stroking; because that was sex, that was Angel.</p>
<p>Wesley’s bruises. They were as bad as the bruises he’d got from hand-to-hand with the duals. As bad as being beaten up by four demons. Did Angel made Wesley scream? Make him beg? Of course he did, it was in Wesley’s dreams. It was what Wesley wanted. When Wesley had said, “That’s not hurting me,” he hadn’t been reassuring, he’d been complaining.</p>
<p>There had been hand-prints in the bruises from the duals. On his hips and his legs and his arm. Along with twenty, thirty other kinds of marks, and they hadn’t stood out at the time. But now Gunn knew what it looked like: the evidence that Wesley had been held down for sex by a very strong man.</p>
<p>He’d had those bruises before the training session. He’d asked for the hand-to-hand to cover up, to get some more bruises, normal bruises, so Gunn wouldn’t suspect the next time he saw Wesley naked.</p>
<p>That must have been two months ago. Well before Barney. So he’d been right when he’d suspected before. And did that mean that he knew his Wesley, or that he didn’t know him at all?</p>
<p>“It wasn’t the first time, was it? The Saturday after. What’s your story for what happened the day you got the duals to beat you up?”</p>
<p>No sign of surprise. Maybe Wesley had been lying there thinking about the same thing. A long silence, and then Wesley raised himself on his elbow and looked down at Gunn. “You have a very good memory.”</p>
<p>“So that happened?”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed and sank back down again, but onto his back, leaving a long line of space between his body and Gunn’s. “You were right. The problem with giving him something is when you have to take it away.”</p>
<p>“What’s that mean?”</p>
<p>“It was... It was after you asked me if we were having sex. And you said I couldn’t go in every day. But you’d leave us alone once a week. He was very angry about the change, and that was when you said –”</p>
<p>“Yeah. I remember.”</p>
<p>“It was kind of you to be willing to leave us alone. It was very generous. But I shouldn’t have gone in that first Thursday when you left us and went to Caritas. It was too soon.”</p>
<p>“He really did rape you.” Gunn had turned his head and he saw Wesley nod.</p>
<p>“It didn’t matter what I said. He wouldn’t stop.”</p>
<p>Something else now from Gunn’s memory, that he would have sworn was weeks apart from that Thursday (which, again, he wouldn’t have said was the day before that training session with the hand-to-hand). “That day he was being stupid when you read to him. When you yelled at him and threw the book. You said you’d warned him to stop. That wasn’t about any stupid jokes about your arm. Was it?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head slowly, over and over. “He was joking about what he’d done to me, he thought it was...” Wesley swallowed. “Not a joke, he didn’t think it was a joke. But he thought it was something good that we’d shared. Because he’d got what he wanted. I couldn’t let him treat it like that even if – I thought you might guess. I knew it must look strange.”</p>
<p>“How did you stop me from guessing on Thursday night? I don’t remember any night round then that could’ve been different enough.”</p>
<p>“It was the night Matt told you about his girlfriend. You were preoccupied. I’d gone to bed early so I wouldn’t have to undress in front of you but I didn’t think that would be enough. I’d hidden the key but I couldn’t think beyond... But you were preoccupied and by the morning I’d thought of what I could do in training.”</p>
<p>What could you do with them? What could you say to them? Or about them? Gunn thought, “You deserve each other,” and he thought he could say that a hundred times and each time it would come out different. Always said to wound, to expose. And always a waste of breath because there were too many ways in which it was true.</p>
<p>“Does he remember?”</p>
<p>“I don’t think so. Not really. He remembers making me angry. Or he remembers when he’s worried about doing something wrong. He assumes...” Wesley shrugged.</p>
<p>“Did you forgive him? Before he forgot, did you forgive him?” Angel had done those drawings of Wesley. Gunn remembered just before he could stop himself from asking the question. Wesley’s face kept so blank as he looked at the drawings. And Gunn had made him put them somewhere safe, and made him go in and thank Angel with a hug.</p>
<p>“Yes and no. He needed me to, so –” A shaking sigh. Gunn reached over and put his hand on Wesley’s chest, Wesley took a fierce, awkward grip on Gunn’s wrist, and they pulled themselves towards each other, closing the gap. “Still... I could hardly pretend that I didn’t know what he was. So I put the rest away to deal with later. I’ve forgiven him now because I brought it back out and used it.”</p>
<p>Gunn sighed and rolled towards Wesley. He put his leg over Wesley’s, and felt a jolt of warmth all through his body when Wesley immediately brought his left leg over to anchor Gunn. “You got a strange way of dealing with things, Wes.”</p>
<p>“Fucked up. I know.”</p>
<p>“Guess we’ll work on that. You got anything else you been hidin’ from me? Somethin’ even worse you been dealin’ with your way?”</p>
<p>No, and Gunn was suddenly exhausted, like he’d had the longest, hardest fight of his life. He surfaced enough during the night to know that Wesley was having his usual difficult dreams (disturbed tonight, rather than violent), and to hear about himself (as “the black one”) at the peak of Angel’s nightmares. But each time he shrugged it off like it was some harmless street-noise, the wind rattling a sign; he’d made things happen, he’d made things change, and he knew now that he could do better for himself than just listen and wait and worry.</p>
<p>They used the bathroom together in the morning, and then dressed together. They didn’t touch, and Gunn didn’t even offer to help Wesley with the long-sleeved top, though he watched every moment – but Gunn felt almost as relieved and happy as he had the very first morning they’d woken up together. Being close to Wesley; so simple, but this was how much he needed it.</p>
<p>Angel was in hell, trying to hide in the gap between the mattress and the wall, and while they were having breakfast Angel started pulling the mattress over himself, working slowly like it was took him minutes to build up each inch of fear (or courage). Still, he was completely hidden by the time Gunn took the blood out of the refrigerator then nodded towards their bedroom. “Like you went last night, Wes. Close the door.” He still didn’t want them to have any chance to see each other. If they’d had anything like normal lives then Gunn would have thrown Angel out. Broken some furniture and spilled some blood ‘cos they’d both have needed to fight, and then he’d’ve thrown him out. But they had this life and Gunn was making it up from moment to moment: what had to change now that Gunn had found them out.</p>
<p>Angel was trembling. If you were sick enough you could see it all as funny: the way the mattress was trembling; a vampire terrified of the sound of two humans talking over breakfast.</p>
<p>Kindest thing would be to let him go hungry until he got lucid, just leave him alone. Gunn didn’t feel kind. He put down the beaker, grabbed hold of the handles on the side of the mattress, and pulled hard. The mattress landed on the floor with a thud, leaving Angel lying on his back. He seemed frozen at first, just staring at Gunn, then there was a rattling, frantic retreat to the safety of the wall.</p>
<p>This Angel didn’t know Wesley. If you said to this Angel, “I found out last night that you raped my boyfriend,” he’d think it was a trick, some twisted excuse for a new form of torture. “And you treated it like a joke.” Or he’d think you meant Angelus, and he’d be guilty and ashamed, and he’d take whatever came as fair. Because Angel knew as well as Gunn did that Angelus wasn’t some random stranger; Angelus and him, they were made out of the same stuff.</p>
<p>“Are you a monster?” Gunn was expecting Angel to start trembling again, but instead Angel frowned and stared at him in a different way, like he was trying to remember something about him. “Are you? Say it.” Angel never spoke to them when he was in hell, he just spoke to himself – but Gunn wanted to get something out of him, even if it wasn’t words.</p>
<p>A whisper: “Yes.” Then he swallowed, and summoned his whole voice. “Yes.”</p>
<p>“Do you deserve this?”</p>
<p>“Yes. I deserve it.”</p>
<p>“Am I as bad as you?”</p>
<p>Angel looked away, towards the door. More frowning, then he met Gunn’s eyes again and said slowly, “I don’t know. I don’t know where you learned to enjoy it. Who you – If it’s only for me then you’re no worse than despicable.”</p>
<p>He sounded like Wesley. And that had come straight from one of their rapes, hadn’t it? Evidence as clear as the bruises. They’d fought and they’d cursed each other, and through it all they’d be snarling or moaning how they were both lost, they were both damned.</p>
<p>“I learned it from you. I met you two years ago, I’d’a staked you on the spot. Like every other vampire thought he could mess with me. Now... what I heard ‘bout you, what I seen... I know why you don’t get to die. Seein’ you pay, yeah, it’s a pleasure.” And it would be, to unchain him and then beat him down again. But not this Angel, he’d want him lucid, he’d want him to know exactly why.</p>
<p>“Two years?” Sounding bored, but with an edge of challenge. “I thought you were born to it.”</p>
<p>“Like I said, I learned it from you.” He picked up the beaker. “You’re lucky. You got me so I don’t wanna come near you. Keep that up, you’ll be safe till the next shift.”</p>
<p>Wesley must have heard Gunn lock the door, but he didn’t come out of the bedroom. Gunn poured the blood away and rinsed out the beaker, and then went to get Wesley.</p>
<p>“What you gonna do today, Wes?” Wesley had been standing looking out of the window.</p>
<p>“Lilah... She’s brought someone else in.”</p>
<p>“She fired you?”</p>
<p>Wesley looked away and shook his head. “Not yet. She says she’s still assessing him. That she’ll probably use us both.” He sighed and shrugged. “There was a prophecy that didn’t quite happen the way I’d translated it. So she was looking in the wrong place when it happened. The other translator doesn’t say I was wrong. Not over that. But she’s had him do his own versions of a lot of my work. She says... She says it’s not a comparison, she just wants to understand more. For the risks.”</p>
<p>“So what’s she got you doing?”</p>
<p>“She’s done a report. I have to consider more options. Explain everything. It’s reasonable.”</p>
<p>“Man, you love options. Gettin’ to explain. Course you love it, you’re the best.”</p>
<p>“I thought I was. I don’t know where she found him. She won’t tell me anything. But I think he’s... I suppose I am too academic. And she’s only been paying for one reason.”</p>
<p>“She c’n afford to pay for ten of you guys. ‘n’ her next report’ll say how she had it right the first time. ‘This is the man who deals with the vampire seer. In the business of prophecies, those visions are as tough and as vague as it gets.’ “</p>
<p>Wesley smiled, and put his hand on Gunn’s arm. “There is Angel. An unfair advantage over the other translator, but we have it.” And that was all that Wesley needed to want to get back to the living-room and get down to work. “What are you going to do?”</p>
<p>“Some stuff to check out online, then I’ll hit the streets.”</p>
<p>Angel was lying quietly. He’d probably be asleep soon. Wake up lucid while Gunn was out working.</p>
<p>Gunn didn’t want them talking to one another. Really, he didn’t want them within ten blocks of each other, he wanted them to act like they’d lost the right even to say each other’s name.</p>
<p>But he had to go out, he had to leave them together. Only a door between them, and he bet they could still talk for hours about how they were both damned. Just asking each other what Gunn had said, what he’d done – that would be too much.</p>
<p>He could gag Angel.</p>
<p>No. No, he couldn’t. He’d been right the first time: Angel had to be able to speak because of the visions. And even if Angel was gagged, Gunn could imagine them working something out. He could imagine Wesley sitting on the floor by the door and reading to Angel for hours.</p>
<p>So he’d tell Wesley not to talk to Angel, he’d get him to promise.</p>
<p>But he just didn’t trust Wesley any more, not where Angel was concerned. Wesley would understand why Gunn needed to keep them apart, he would think it was reasonable; but it would just take Angel acting confused and pathetic about the chains, acting like he’d forgotten, and Wesley would be lying to Gunn, same as before.</p>
<p>Don’t leave it to trust, then. Get some guarantee. Like... Like... Well, they had that voice-operated recorder, that they used in case Angel got a vision while they were out training. If he put it in Angel’s room, near the door... He’d be able to check up on them every time he got back.</p>
<p>Yeah. That’d be enough for him. A couple of weeks, maybe, of Wesley proving that he could do what Gunn wanted. He should know he was lucky: that Gunn didn’t need more than a few new rules, after the huge deal of what he’d done with Angel. Every day they’d done it, in Gunn’s own home, while Gunn got nothing except the job of worrying about Wesley.</p>
<p>Gunn couldn’t concentrate on what he was looking for online. He needed to get out right now, get Wesley started on working off what he owed. He got up, went over to Wesley’s desk, opened the second drawer and took out the recorder.</p>
<p>Wesley looked surprised, then interested. “You need to tape a meeting? Is it the Gorhan case?”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head. “It’s not to take with me, it’s... Wes, I can’t have you talkin’ to him when I’m out. I gotta know that you can act like he’s not here, like it’s just you and me.”</p>
<p>Shock, and Wesley’s pen clattered to the desk. “Of course you... But you don’t have to use that. Haven’t I – All you have to do is tell me.”</p>
<p>“He keeps on surprisin’ you, Wes. How many times you said that? I don’t - I can’t take any more surprises, not now. So this is goin’ in his room any time I leave. ‘n’ I’m tellin’ you your voice ain’t gonna be on it. You don’t even say, ‘Charles won’t let me talk to you.’ He needs anything told, I’ll do it.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked away from Gunn, down at the desk. He picked up his pen, took a long, shuddering breath, then nodded slowly. “Yes, I understand.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked like he was going to carry on with his work, so Gunn opened the door to their bedroom. “I’m going out now, Wes. We got a new routine. This is how it starts.” He pointed, and the expression on Wesley’s face was nearly as bad as in the first days after they heard about the Kekulei demons, and he nodded again and swallowed hard, and he went.</p>
<p>Angel did seem to be asleep, and telling him wouldn’t have done much good anyway, since he’d forget it again in a couple of hours. Gunn took a blank pad and wrote on it in thick black marker-pen: “It is over and he is not allowed to speak to you. Do not try to get him to speak. I will know if you make him break the rule and I will gag him.” He propped up the pad where Angel would have to see it, and where he couldn’t reach it and tear it up. Half the time Angel wouldn’t know who “he” was, but he’d get the warning whenever he was lucid.</p>
<p>Gunn locked the door and glanced up at the screen and then thought that Wesley shouldn’t be able to look at Angel either. Not a good idea to take the screen down, or to cover the camera, because Gunn still needed the screen for his own protection. But he could unplug the screen, wrap the lead around the stand so it wouldn’t reach the socket, and use a padlock or something to keep it in place. A padlock and a strap, as it turned out, and he found a way of covering the plug so that even if Wesley got an extension lead he still wouldn’t be able to plug the screen into it.</p>
<p>He didn’t mention the screen when he let Wesley out, but he did tell him about the message he’d left for Angel, including what he’d said about the gag.</p>
<p>Wesley looked sick. “Would you?” Almost a whisper.</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Hafta do something.” Course he wouldn’t gag him. No harm, though, in havin’ him and Angel both think about it.</p>
<p>“What if he got a vision?”</p>
<p>Another shrug. “You could text me. Done it before. Guess you’d have to stay here. Be me handlin’ it ‘n’ maybe the crew.”</p>
<p>Wesley should his head, over and over. Gunn saw his lips move, probably “No” and “I won’t”. Yeah, that was the idea. He touched Wesley’s shoulder then went to get his case files from the table.</p>
<p>“I’ll be back in a few hours. Just act like he’s not here. OK?”</p>
<p>A small grunt from Wesley, who had made himself busy looking for a book, and was still giving all of his attention to that when Gunn left.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley was sulking at Gunn big-time, just wouldn’t accept that he had to give Gunn proof. On Thursday and Friday he wouldn’t speak to Gunn above a whisper, and on Saturday he wouldn’t speak to him at all. He’d nod or shake his head (mostly shake it), and sometimes he wouldn’t look at Gunn for hours, not even when he was ordered.</p>
<p>He’d sulk extra-hard after Gunn had come back and checked the tape, and Gunn got more and more disappointed in him. The way Gunn had planned it, when he’d listened to the tape and found it was OK, he’d go into the bedroom and Wesley would be waiting looking all “What did I tell you?” because of course he already knew it was OK. And Gunn would have a story ready about his day, with a couple of chances to ask Wesley for advice about the case. He’d have suggestions about take-out food if Wesley didn’t want to cook, about a movie to rent, about a programme for that evening’s training. They’d have forgotten the tape within a minute because it wasn’t important, Angel wasn’t important, not compared to what they could give each other. And when he wasn’t angry any more, when he and Wesley both knew that he was the first, last and only person Wesley would turn to for help, then the tape wouldn’t be important at all, and they’d work together on making everything better.</p>
<p>Yeah, well, in the plan Wesley had taken it like a man, managed to act like he was sorry for longer than just one night. They did less together now than they had before Gunn had found out. Wesley wouldn’t eat with him, definitely wouldn’t cook, refused to go training with the crew, wouldn’t even sit on the couch and read while Gunn was playing his games on the computer. They had their training sessions on their own and they shared a bed; that was all.</p>
<p>Gunn was out for more and more of each day, keeping busy, spending his time with people who’d talk to him. Wesley seemed to be either at his desk or in the bedroom; after a while Gunn gave up looking in the bedroom after he’d checked the tapes, and by the time he gave up Wesley had gone as far as hunching up on the floor on the far side of the bed, and he had to know that he looked just like Angel going for gold in that Hiding-and-Sulking event.</p>
<p>Obviously Gunn needed another plan. But he’d told Wesley what he thought of the sulking, and Wesley had just turned away and shook his head, and for now Gunn was out of ideas. Maybe he could count “giving up” as his new plan. Wesley wasn’t that difficult to live with once you’d decided just to ignore him and spend your time the way you wanted (the way you hadn’t been able since Angel had been well enough to go training with them, and, God, that had only been back in March). Wesley had to get bored eventually, try a new approach of his own.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Gunn knew why Wesley was sulking, and he knew why he was going to keep on with the tapes, but he had no idea why he and Wesley were having sex. Shouldn’t they be lying with their backs to one another, jaws clenched so hard their teeth might splinter? Gunn had gone to bed like that the first night, but then when Wesley had got in he’d slid straight across to fold himself against Gunn’s back, his knee between Gunn’s knees, like nothing was wrong between them.</p>
<p>It could have seemed pathetic, or manipulative, or just plain annoying, and at first Gunn didn’t react, didn’t turn to look at Wesley because Wesley didn’t deserve that attention. But then Gunn took in Wesley’s sighs of contentment, the relaxed weight of him, and he knew it was real and then he didn’t turn because he didn’t need to. He reached back and put his hand on Wesley’s hip, and pushed and stretched to get Wesley’s knee up between his thighs, and they both sighed. Wesley’s body. Gunn couldn’t be angry with Wesley’s body.</p>
<p>Even with the sighing, Gunn had assumed that would be all, since it had just been one day – one bad day – since they’d been telling each other why they wouldn’t have sex. But then he felt Wesley get hard against him, and he couldn’t think about being angry, he couldn’t think about anything. Wesley’s cock wanting him... and within seconds all the thoughts and doubts and complications belonged to someone else.</p>
<p>Here, now, he was a screaming cock and a starving, pleading hole; and a heart that might tear loose, and a wordless moan that was an open begging. And then he was fingers scrabbling desperately for the tube of lubricant, and an elbow pushing Wesley roughly out of the way to make space for a dripping hand. When he’d made himself ready he took hold of Wesley, pushed him in as far as he could manage, then put his hand back on Wesley’s hip and pulled. He gave a growl of triumph as his hole got the fill that it had won by force of need, and then in the next breath he was moaning again, but with huge satisfaction, not need, and with amazement at the depth of that satisfaction.</p>
<p>While his hole had been aching and empty, it had been simple and savage in its orders to Gunn: to get it a hard fucking. Gunn would have said that it would never even have wondered who the cock belonged to, or have allowed the slightest pause in the wild ride.</p>
<p>But that was before it remembered. In the moments of stillness after Gunn pulled the cock full in, his hole absorbed the feeling that they made against each other, the fit – and in the next moment all of the greed and urgency fell away. It knew this cock, and the feelings the cock gave it meant far more than the promise of a good hard fuck. When it had this cock, then it knew beyond doubt that everything in the world was right. The world contained this fit between them, and so nothing in it could be wrong. There was kindness, there was loyalty, there was peace, there was safety and there always would be.</p>
<p>Gunn thought, “That’s love. That’s like the sweetest feeling of being in love,” and there was amazement in his moan because he hadn’t known before that his body could hold feelings about Wesley that were quite separate from the ones he’d been living with and working with for all the rest of the day.</p>
<p>Wesley was panting and shivering, almost shuddering against Gunn. He could hardly move, the way he was lying on his side, and he could only rock against Gunn, and only do that by pushing against Gunn’s hand on his hip. Gunn slid the hand down to Wesley’s thigh and stroked slowly and gently, trying to soothe him, but that just made Wesley more desperate. So Gunn carefully eased himself onto his stomach, holding Wesley as tight as he could manage to keep him inside.</p>
<p>The next night Gunn got into bed facing Wesley’s side, and Wesley came into his arms and they started with a kiss. They didn’t usually do much more than rub against one another. Wesley never gave any sign that he was wanting to be fucked, and Gunn would have pretended not to see the sign anyway; Angel was still much too close, and Gunn still didn’t trust himself. They never spoke.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>On the tapes, Angel never tried to talk to Wesley. Gunn could never be sure if he was truly lucid, but in the times when he seemed closest he would be calling out to Gunn, telling him not to be angry with Wesley, taking all the blame on himself. He didn’t refer to Gunn’s message, or not directly. “You know him, you – Maybe he does need that, to have you – To have you take over. Stop him... thinking as himself. Let him... start to forget. But don’t – Don’t make him do the opposite, don’t make him join in. I know you want to show him, but – You can’t guess what they’re like. You think you can use them. To shock him. To stop him – But you’d never get clean. Your new prisoner... No, you can’t be kind now but – You can be nothing. Don’t make him – You can be nothing.”</p>
<p>Was that lucid? Lucid with a thick layer of Angel-style theories, maybe. Like them having a new prisoner. If there were times when he was clear enough to know that there was no new prisoner, just Wesley next door without a key, there was no hint of it on the tape. So either he never woke lucid or he saw the message as soon as he opened his eyes, and lay there as silent as Wesley.</p>
<p>Angelus definitely saw the message, and it made him want to meet Gunn; he liked Gunn’s style, wanted to hear more about the gag, about how Angel had got himself into trouble, thought he could make it worth Gunn’s while to bring the man in for sharing with or without the gag. Gunn hit fast-forward as soon as Angelus appeared – after all, Wesley would never try to talk to Angelus – but he heard enough to feel guilty about Wesley having to sit and listen to the whole thing. He tried to offer sympathy when he went into the bedroom after the first time of hearing Angelus on the tape, tried to bond over a year’s experience of Angelus being loud and descriptive but Wesley just frowned at him, like he was wondering why Gunn wouldn’t just shut up and go away.</p>
<p>Mostly, though, the tape caught the sounds of nightmares and hallucinations, and it was rarely easy to tell which was which. The fake visions, OK, no mistaking those; and they also meant that the sounds beforehand must have been a nightmare. Not that it mattered – what difference could it make to anyone? – but after a few days Gunn was making a game of trying to guess: how many states would there be on the tape? and what would they be? His rules for scoring were tough, and any points he got for being right could be wiped out completely if there was a state that he couldn’t identify. When he reached a hundred points he was going to buy himself a new computer game, and this gave him the incentive to go right into the room when he was leaving or taking the tape-recorder, because then he could see whether or not Angel was awake. Was that cold-blooded? Was that like something the real guards would do? But he wasn’t treating it like a joke, he was just... Maybe trying to remind himself that the tape made it sound worse, all run together. Angel’s mind did let him be quiet sometimes, it did let him sleep. The game was just about dealing with listening to the tape.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>“You’re not feeding him. He was lucid this morning, I think you could have fed him. We still have ten pints of blood.” The first words that Wesley had addressed directly to Gunn in three days. Gunn had gone out to have a Sunday breakfast by the beach, and when he got back Wesley was waiting for him, standing just inside the door. Wesley was pretty calm, just stating a fact – but an important fact.</p>
<p>“Y’re right, I’m not. He been complainin’?”</p>
<p>“When are you going to feed him?”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “When I feel like doin’ somethin’ for him. No sign’a that yet.” And Wesley nodded like he accepted that, like it was another simple fact but then he took one of his books and went into the bedroom, and as far as Gunn knew he stayed there for the rest of the day.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Soon Gunn found it difficult to imagine Wesley talking to him again, or talking to anyone. In his sleep, in the first few days, he’d whisper and shush himself (“It’s him. You know what he’d do. He’s not... We keep him out.”). And then he did this thing of gabbling, too fast for Gunn to catch more than one word in ten; the words would pour out for ten, twenty seconds, and he’d go tense enough that he’d almost be sitting up in bed, and then the words would cut off and he’d sink back until the next one hit. Yeah, it was kind of like a vision; that urgent, that random. Now, in the last few nights, he’d started talking normally, but not in English. A demon language, Gunn thought, something that flowed and swayed. It was easy to sleep through, and Gunn’s guess was that he’d never find out how long they lasted, those calm, serious conversations. Sometimes Wesley still gabbled, but now that wasn’t in English either.</p>
<p>The demon language must be something that Wesley was translating for Lilah Morgan. Gunn worked that out on Wednesday night when the tape had Wesley getting a phone call, and then answering it entirely in that language. Angel reacted so strongly to the sound – shaking in his chains, and panting – that Gunn’s first thought was, “Angel understands what he’s saying. Wesley called himself from the cellphone. He’s talking to Angel, that’s who.” But he used *69, and that was Lilah’s number, calling an hour ago. Probably the other translator or something, calling from a late-night meeting in Lilah’s office, put on to pick holes in the work that Wesley handed over that morning. Yeah, no wonder he was obsessing, dreaming in that language; he’d played it super-cool, though, during that call. And Angel probably hadn’t understood anything, he’d just recognised Wesley’s voice – and it made him pant and quiver like an eager dog.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>On Thursday evening, when Gunn was getting himself a second beer, he pulled out the drawer just to look at the blood stacked in there, just to freak himself out about having got to this state over a vampire, and there weren’t ten pints, there were only seven.</p>
<p>So Wesley had figured out how to pick the lock.</p>
<p>Yeah, he could’ve got the tools on Wednesday, when he was out for his meeting with Lilah Morgan. He was going in there, and stopping the tape, and... Well, how far was he going? Was he talking to Angel? Was he touching him?</p>
<p>There weren’t any new bruises, so the sex he was having with Angel must be a lot like the sex he was having with Gunn. OK, if he was having it. Angel wasn’t chained right for them to lie on the mattress and kiss; he could only lie on his right side, and Gunn simply couldn’t imagine Wesley lying on his left side for sex, not even for Angel.</p>
<p>And talking... Would they really both be able to forget about Gunn’s message, right there in front of them? Especially Wesley, when his sulking was all about how far Gunn had gone to show that he didn’t trust Wesley.</p>
<p>Yeah, right, when now Gunn knew that he hadn’t gone far enough. This time he wasn’t going to give Wesley the option of confessing, he was going to catch him in the act. He thought of setting up a second tape, maybe hidden next to the camera, or of some booby-trap for the lock or the door so Wesley wouldn’t be able to close it afterwards, and the proof would be all over him.</p>
<p>Tempting but too complicated, and still not “in the act”. He’d got too used to the idea of leaving them alone, setting himself free to do his own thing. For something like this, you had to be prepared to sit it out. He’d use the monitor. He knew the signal would reach as far as the street, so he’d take the receiver and sit it out in the truck at the corner of the building. If he left the apartment when Angel was lucid, then Wesley would probably go in to feed him straight away, and there wouldn’t be long to wait.</p>
<p>Would Wesley be listening for the sound of the truck driving away? Maybe. Gunn didn’t forget things, had never had to come back for something, but Wesley must have heard that sound so many times, some part of his brain would go on alert if a part of the routine went missing.</p>
<p>So he’d drive away for a few blocks, come back as quickly as he could. Be even better if he could swap the truck, maybe for a car from the crew, but – No, not enough time, too many questions.</p>
<p>Wesley was already asleep, already in the middle of one of his conversations. A relief, really, because Gunn had been ready to push him away, tell him “not tonight” (brain firmly in charge, body stripped of its vote) and that might have given Wesley too much warning that Gunn was planning something.</p>
<p>The next morning Angel woke around eleven – Gunn heard him sitting up – and he was quiet enough that he might be lucid. Gunn sent Wesley to the bedroom, and yes, Angel knew who he was, and knew that he’d written the message, only today he wasn’t in any mood to plead, he was in the mood to stare at Gunn and at the message and hate them both.</p>
<p>Gunn had put the receiver with his files the night before. He took a couple of sodas and a bag of cookies and yelled to Wesley that he’d be back some time after two.</p>
<p>Silence. Not even the sound of the chains. How did Angel keep so still? Maybe he didn’t know that he was about to see Wesley. Maybe he thought he’d dreamed it, or that it was years in the past. Yeah, if Angel knew, then why would he act like he hated the message? If he knew, he’d act like it was a joke, like Gunn was a joke because Gunn had said that he’d stop Wesley, he’d made threats and now Wesley had made him look like a fool.</p>
<p>So Angel didn’t know or... Or Wesley was still showing some respect. He had to break some rules to get in and feed Angel, but maybe he didn’t even want to take advantage. Maybe he just shook his head when Angel wanted to talk. Wanted to give him some new bruises. Maybe he just pointed at the message.</p>
<p>Gunn would find out.</p>
<p>And then what would be do?</p>
<p>No, he wouldn’t go in the room. Catching them with the door open, that would be enough. He’d yell at Wesley to get his clothes back on and come out, and then... No, he didn’t know what he’d do, not if he’d heard more than feeding.</p>
<p>Fact was, the nearest thing he could feel wasn’t rage, it was despair, like if he had just two ounces less pride, he might end up on his knees, asking Wesley if there was anything he could do that would make him as important to Wesley as Angel was. Even one tenth as important. But he wasn’t going to do that. And he wasn’t going to leave, so...</p>
<p>They had to work together, they had to agree on the new rules together. So he wouldn’t start by telling Wesley, he’d start by asking him. Asking him how quickly he could stop sulking if that would change Gunn’s mind about feeding Angel. He’d say, “Immediately,” and Gunn would say, “How many days would you need to see that before you believed it? If you were me?” And they’d agree on a date (four days, maybe, a week?), and Gunn would do all he could to make the waiting easy on Wesley, have him want to act normal for his own sake not just for Angel’s.</p>
<p>Yeah, focus on that, on the feeding. For the talking and the fucking... he’d promise himself here and now that he wouldn’t do anything, no matter what he found, not for at least a day.</p>
<p>Angel was moving. Lying down, it sounded like. How long would it take a vampire to go weak from hunger? And what the hell was Wesley waiting for? If he left it another half an hour Angel might be asleep again.</p>
<p>At 12.22, Angel started talking to himself, very quietly, in an ordinary dream. “I thought I’d ask him to come in. When I saw him in the corridor, I thought, ‘You were in my bed.’ But he says he can’t.” That was all Gunn could make out and then there was silence again – until 12.49 when Angelus appeared, very, very hungry and dreaming about having too much choice about who to take first.</p>
<p>Gunn had thought his stakeout wouldn’t last more than ten minutes. If he’d been planning around covering the full three hours, he would probably have let himself go get a burrito as soon as he heard Angelus. A twenty-minute break. That would have been safe. Wesley would never go in that close to Angelus.</p>
<p>He finally gave up at two, when Wesley would start expecting him back, and he ate his burrito while taking a walk in Alondra Park. Wesley must have heard the truck or noticed the receiver was gone. He’d need another plan. Probably have to leave it a couple of days. Push Wesley away for a couple of nights until he knew for sure.</p>
<p>He got home around 2.40. Angelus was still there but awake now, and Gunn didn’t even step into the room, but opened the door enough to reach down and take the recorder. He set it to rewind then went to get another soda, and discovered that there were six pints now, when there’d been seven that morning.</p>
<p>Wesley had not gone into Angel’s room. Gunn knew for a fact that he hadn’t. So what had Wesley done? And had he done the same with the other three pints?</p>
<p>Gunn waited for Wesley to come out of the bedroom, but didn’t give him the time to sit down at his desk. “What are you doin’ with the blood? What’re you doin’ while I’m gone? We’re down to six pints now.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked surprised, like he’d forgotten about the blood and couldn’t imagine why it was any of Gunn’s business. Then he gave a short, bored sigh, and turned his back on Gunn to go to his desk. Gunn wanted to shake him, really wanted to fuck him, wanted to say something to make him admit that it was absolutely Gunn’s business. Something like... if Wesley was trying to guilt-trip him into feeding Angel, he’d made a big mistake with the ultra-British, super-subtle bullshit. “Man, you’da done better to hire a singin’ telegram.” But Wesley would just blank him, leave him looking twice the fool he’d felt before.</p>
<p>“Yeah, why’d I ask? I’m the one you won’t talk to. Guess I’ll just have to watch, see what you do when you run out.”</p>
<p>He put the recorder back in Angel’s room then went back to the park and ran until the light started to go. After that he dropped in on the crew to see if he could get a good sword-fight or any kind of fight, and he ended up staying until gone eleven, when they went out on patrol. Of course he couldn’t join them, because of the visions, but God he missed that: the territory, the daily purpose. He’d had that with Wesley, when they’d been Wyndham-Gunn. So he went on a patrol of his own – well, a tour, really – of places they’d been sent on visions. Not trying to be complete: not as far out as Montebello where those kids had been trying to raise a Havelte as a pet, and it was enough to drive past the power site, he didn’t have to go down into the tunnels. At Hermosa Beach, around one, he decided he’d had enough (so many memories of Angel getting worse), and he turned around and went looking for a diner.</p>
<p>He should be relieved right now. He should be happy. Wesley picking the lock, sneaking in to see his vampire: that had only happened in Gunn’s imagination. Now he knew Wesley accepted how he was treating Angel, he knew Wesley respected his rules. So what if Wesley had this thing of slowly throwing out pig’s blood? For all Gunn knew, it had the same reason as the demon language that Wesley talked in his sleep. Just Wesley being Wesley. He should be relieved.</p>
<p>You’d think he wanted to see Wesley guilty and ashamed. That he couldn’t get enough of hearing Wesley say that he didn’t deserve Gunn. No, he wanted Wesley happy. In the end, that was all he wanted.</p>
<p>How was that going to happen, though, if Wesley wouldn’t even talk to him? For a few hours there he’d thought he had the answer: the feeding. He’d thought that Wesley was desperate to get Angel fed, enough that he’d agree to anything – and so they’d get a new start. But instead he’d found that Wesley had accepted, and where was his leverage now?</p>
<p>OK, if he wasn’t going to agree with Wesley on the date for feeding Angel, then he’d agree it with himself. A week from tomorrow. Or the day that Wesley threw away the last pint. Whichever came first. He’d go out immediately and get some fresh blood, and he’d tell Wesley what he’d decided. Maybe Wesley would come with him to the butcher’s. Maybe Wesley would thank him. That might be their new start.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t take any of the blood over the weekend, but he took a pint on Monday and two on Tuesday. He was sleeping a lot, going to bed hours before Gunn. He never woke up when Gunn settled against him, but he always nestled closer. Sometimes he pressed his lips against Gunn’s skin, or whispered in that language. The sex, though, that seemed to be over for now.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>On Wednesday morning Wesley got up and left the apartment while Gunn was still asleep. Gunn’s first thought was that Wesley must be doing laundry, probably got it into his head that the other translator had, like, blindingly-clean chinos, and pressed so fresh you could cut yourself on them. But the laundry-room was empty, and the car was gone, and so were the stacks of papers on Wesley’s desk. Lilah must have asked for a breakfast meeting, then. Gunn was curious about where they’d go, when the library didn’t open until ten; and he’d have to stay curious, because Wesley wasn’t going to answer that question any more than the others.</p>
<p>An emergency meeting. Was that a good sign for Wesley, against the other translator? That his work was so important it just couldn’t wait? Or was it a bad sign, that they thought he would (and should) put up with anything? Or was it nothing? Just fallout from Lilah having a crappy week? A crappy couple of weeks, if she’d been working past nine the other week with the other translator.</p>
<p>Just past ten thirty the phone on Wesley’s desk rang. It was Lilah Morgan and she was calling for Gunn. “You’re at home. Good. I’m driving Wesley over. Expect me in twenty minutes. I’ll call for you to come down.”</p>
<p>“Hey, what’s goin’ on? What’s – What’s he done”</p>
<p>“He, uh – He was taken ill at our meeting. He’s in no state to drive.” She wouldn’t tell him anything more over the phone.</p>
<p>Gunn went straight down and waited out the twenty minutes on the kerb outside the building. Wesley was in the passenger seat, with his head turned towards the window and his eyes closed, and the words that came to Gunn’s mind were “propped up” (not “sitting”), and “unconscious” (not “asleep”). He hadn’t shaved for the meeting, maybe hadn’t even brushed his hair. His lips usually looked so red to Gunn against the stubble but today they looked grey, and he suddenly looked so thin.</p>
<p>Turned out Wesley was semi-conscious. Gunn had been ready to carry him but when he slid his arm around Wesley’s back, Wesley turned to him and held onto him – eyes still closed, sluggish, and muttering like he was dreaming – and Gunn managed to get him to his feet, guide him into the building, and haul him up the stairs. Lilah took Wesley’s satchel and went on ahead and waited in the apartment, and Gunn could hear her making calls and rearranging meetings for most of the time he was on the stairs.</p>
<p>He lowered Wesley to the bed, on his own side, nearest to the door, took off Wesley’s shoes, laid his hand briefly on Wesley’s head, and then went back out to talk to Lilah.</p>
<p>“What happened?”</p>
<p>A sigh. “The short answer: he collapsed in the stairwell a few minutes after he left our meeting. For the longer version...” She lowered her voice slightly. “I’ve been concerned about him since our meeting last week, and he was much worse today.”</p>
<p>“Worse how?”</p>
<p>“The way he spoke. That was immediately obvious. And then I saw what he’d done with the translation.”</p>
<p>Jeez, she’d fired him, hadn’t she? Get him up before dawn, pick his work apart for two, three hours straight, fire him – and then act like she’s Florence fucking Nightingale! “I saw him work on that translation. He was – There’s no one could have worked harder.”</p>
<p>“You saw him work on it, but I didn’t think you ever tried to read his work. I’m sure he was working hard, he gave me at least fifty pages, but none of it’s in English. It could take me the rest of the day to find out what language he was using, though I doubt that what he wrote was related in any way to the manuscript I gave him. Has there been any language that he’s mentioned recently? More than others?”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head, and started to be frightened for Wesley. It was like the thrift-shop clothes or something: he’d sabotaged himself. If he didn’t have Angel to hurt him, then he’d do it to himself.</p>
<p>He glanced towards the bedroom, and when he looked back at Lilah he found that she had followed his gaze, though the half-open door showed nothing more than carpet. “What did he say about it? He wouldn’t tell you himself?”</p>
<p>“That was even more disturbing. He acted as if he didn’t know what he’d done. He showed me the papers as if I should be able to read them, and he talked me through them as he usually does, except that he wasn’t speaking English, and I could tell that he didn’t know that I couldn’t understand him.”</p>
<p>“What did you do?”</p>
<p>Lilah shrugged and shook her head. “I let him talk. He obviously wanted to. And he’d been so withdrawn at the beginning of the meeting, even worse than the last time...” A sigh and another shrug. “He came alive when he was speaking this other language. He stopped whispering, he looked me in the eye. Whatever he was talking about, he was interested in it. I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I tried to interrupt. So I nodded whenever I was supposed to, and I let him get through to the end. When he’d finished he straightened the paper and put them back in the folder for me, and I thanked him and put the folder in my briefcase with the manuscript, and by the time I looked up he’d withdrawn again.</p>
<p>“I couldn’t make him speak at all. He wouldn’t look at me. I’d known since the first few minutes that I couldn’t let him drive home, and I should just have taken him down to my car right then. But I’m afraid...” Another glance towards the bedroom door and she swallowed. “He kept looking at my briefcase. And I knew he must be waiting for me to bring out the next manuscript, so I told him that I didn’t have anything for him. I was going on to try to soften that when he just stood up and walked out. He didn’t even take his bag. The people in the stairwell said he staggered through the doorway as if he’d had his whole weight against the door. And then he was heading for the support of the wall, but he didn’t manage more than two steps. Half of them thought he was a drunk. They were about to call security.”</p>
<p>Gunn closed his eyes, seeing Wesley falling, and then lying there with the people arguing over him.</p>
<p>“Where did it happen?” His voice was shaking. And she’d be thinking, “Yeah, that’s a fag,” but he still couldn’t keep himself steady.</p>
<p>“On the third floor.” The library, She had to be talking about the library. Just a normal meeting. Starting at the normal time. “I did send someone for security. To help carry him down to my car.”</p>
<p>The fear. Like when he’d looked at the screen and seen how Wesley lay in Angel’s arms. But that had been a single punch to his heart and then he’d known what to do. This... All he was sure of now was that the next blow would hit some way that he could never brace himself.</p>
<p>“Thank you. I –” Make her go. Leave them alone. “I’m sorry about the translation. Could you give it to someone else? Is there enough time?” She wouldn’t try to sue them, would she? Even if her firm lost millions over the prophecy... Well, she had to know that the sum total of everything that Wesley owned didn’t come to a quarter of what she’d paid for her car.</p>
<p>“There should be plenty of time.” She lifted her briefcase onto Wesley’s desk, took out the folder with those strange pages, and gave it to Gunn. “I’m not going to try to read this. I don’t know if you should show it to him, if there’s any point.”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “Guess not. When he’s the only one who can read it.”</p>
<p>She looked at her watch and made ready to leave, but then at the door she paused, looked at him hard, and said, “He must have been so different with you, if you didn’t realise that he was having a nervous breakdown. If you thought he was just working too hard on the translation. Do you think he knew what was happening and tried to hide it from you? Though I don’t see how he could know, from the way he must have kept on writing in that language.”</p>
<p>Wesley trying to hide it from him. God, she had no idea. The relief, for now, was stronger than the guilt. Was she going to worry that she’d made it worse, putting him under pressure with this other translator, not checking up when she’d seen the signs at the last meeting? When if she knew... She’d barely register on the scale. He owed her. Of course he owed her.</p>
<p>“The mistake he made. Over the Kekulei demons. He’s...” Gunn swallowed. “Never seen a person take anything so hard. He has times when he just... When he just...”</p>
<p>“He withdraws?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, like he needs to hide. I never found out anything to do about that but just wait. Be ready when he did come back. Knew it’d been a long wait this time but I didn’t realise it was different.”</p>
<p>She nodded slowly, stared at the floor for a long time, then turned her head to look towards Angel’s room. She had to notice that the screen wasn’t plugged in. Angel was protesting about something, testing the limits of his chains but quiet enough that he was probably dreaming.</p>
<p>“I would imagine you’ll be dealing with the seer on your own until Wesley gets better. Or maybe you have been since he started to withdraw? That can’t make things any easier.” She nodded towards the locked door, and Gunn couldn’t tell if “that” meant “coping with Angel alone” or “having to listen to a vampire being violently, unpredictably insane day after day.” Didn’t matter.</p>
<p>“Yeah, they – Wesley can’t go in there. Angel really messes him up.”</p>
<p>Very slowly, as if the idea was just forming: “Do you think it would help to take him away for a while? Away from that?” Another nod towards the door. “Frankly, I think you’re long overdue for respite care, even without what happened today.”</p>
<p>“You know any nursin’ homes take in vamps? Got a squad of demon-hunters on call? Sure it’d help, but it ain’t gonna happen.”</p>
<p>“It could happen by the end of the week. I can get a squad together. They could move in here, watch in shifts. I know it will probably disturb the seer. But if I were you I would take that risk.”</p>
<p>Gunn’s chest felt tight. Of all things, he got a sharp ache in his jaw. Hope. Damn, but it hurt. “Y’know he doesn’t get half the visions he used to? Chances are you won’t see nothing.”</p>
<p>She just ignored that. “How long do you think you might want? A week? Two weeks?”</p>
<p>A week? He’d never been away from L.A. for a week. Where the hell did people go? What did they do? Somewhere on the coast. Hafta have the ocean for Wes. Probably somewhere small and quiet. But then too small and they’d notice Wes, that he wasn’t right. And small meant the middle of nowhere, meant less choice in things to do – meant taking more of a gamble about what Wes needed, what was best for him.</p>
<p>“A week. Yeah, a week’d be good. I’d hafta check your squad out first. No offence, but – And they’d be goin’ in to feed him so there’s stuff they gotta know. I’d need a couple hours, explain the setup to the whole crew.”</p>
<p>Lilah said she’d call at nine, tell him what day he could plan for leaving town; should be Friday, certainly no later than Saturday morning.</p>
<p>She had the door open and she’d turned to back out when she paused again. “Gunn, the security guards assumed that he’d fainted from hunger. The woman said that his bones were hurting her. Of course, I don’t know what she’s used to, but... He certainly hadn’t been gaining weight in the last two months, has he?”</p>
<p>While Wesley had been sulking Gunn hadn’t even been wondering what Wesley had been eating, hadn’t seen him swallow anything except tea and come. Again, the relief that Lilah could have no idea, but the guilt now much closer behind. He was used to Wesley thin. He loved Wesley thin. He’d stared at those bones so hard that first evening, when he’d been thinking that this was just a strange new friend. Was that an excuse? And that month of not being allowed to see them, and getting them back covered in Angel’s marks. Was that an excuse for thinking nothing beyond, “He’s mine.”?</p>
<p>“Yeah. That’s gonna stop.”</p>
<p>He could hear Lilah walking away down the corridor, but he stayed by the door, not moving, feeling he was scarcely breathing, until he heard her get into the car and drive away.</p>
<p>Wesley’s eyes were half-open, and he’d turned his head towards the door. He tracked Gunn as Gunn went in and knelt by the bed, but then closed his eyes when Gunn took his hand. The hand was cold, the bones felt cold. Gunn tightened his grip, felt the bones move – so long, so fine – and then he suddenly pressed himself hard against the bed, fastened his other hand around Wesley’s elbow, and clamped the length of Wesley’s forearm between both of his own. He was breathing hard.</p>
<p>Two long breaths to steady himself, then he said, “Do you know what happened?”</p>
<p>Wesley opened his eyes, frowned like he was thinking, then shook his head with a slight tilt to the side. More “not really” than “no idea”.</p>
<p>“You went to the library for a meeting with Lilah Morgan. You collapsed. She brought you home.” A nod, not surprised, and Wesley’s eyes started drifting shut again. “You scared her, you’re scaring me. Wes, Wes, will you talk to me?”</p>
<p>A long, serious silence, with Wesley wide-awake. Then he looked from Gunn towards the living-room, suddenly started writhing with tension, and abruptly shook his head.</p>
<p>“OK. OK.” Gunn had let go of Wesley’s elbow and was stroking slowly downwards from his chest to his stomach, trying to calm him. “I get it. I get it.” He managed to smile. “Hell, I can’t make you, can I?”</p>
<p>A pause, then Wesley gave a shuddering sigh and slowly relaxed under Gunn’s hand. He stared at Gunn, that serious look again, then gave a very slight nod, and a very slight smile. He eased his hand out of Gunn’s grip, but just to lay it on top of Gunn’s other hand, on his stomach, and then he sighed quietly and closed his eyes.</p>
<p>Gunn thought that Wesley might fall asleep in a few minutes, but he didn’t, and that meant that Gunn had to figure out what to do next when it looked like almost everything he’d done up to now had been the wrong thing.</p>
<p>“Wes? Can I lie next to you?” He’d meant: “along your left side, the way you’re lying now” and he would have gone on to say that but Wesley was already moving over to make room. Wesley lay against Gunn’s left side, his face pressed against Gunn’s chest, and Gunn held him tight.</p>
<p>Wesley still didn’t sleep, though he lay like he was completely drained: no energy, not even any thoughts. Gunn had thousands of thoughts, seemed there were never fewer than three at once, and there wasn’t one that managed to hold itself together for more than five seconds. A thousand thoughts about Wesley going crazy and about how it must have been obvious for at least a week. Obvious to anyone who didn’t just think Wesley was still sulking. Would Angel have done better? Would Angel have realised? Was there any vacation in the world that would be enough to make him better? Or... how much worse would he get if Lilah couldn’t do what she’d said?</p>
<p>The same fragmented thoughts, over and over. Remembering the writhing and the tension – and how could that man ever talk to him again? Wasn’t that too crazy, wasn’t that man lost? But then Wesley’s hand on his hand, with Wesley made calm again.</p>
<p>Gunn started to get hungry. Must be around midday. Angel had woken up in hell about twenty minutes ago.</p>
<p>“I dunno about you, Wes, but I hafta eat lunch. I’ll get a buncha salads, OK? Some good bread?” Gunn started to pull away. Wesley did not look happy, though he wasn’t shaking his head. Gunn was going to ignore any head-shaking anyway; speaking might be optional here, but eating wasn’t. “I’ll go to the butcher’s too. To get some fresh blood.” Now Wesley looked confused and anxious. “To feed him, Wes. Soon as I can today.” And Wesley swallowed and nodded, and rolled away onto his back.</p>
<p>Gunn’s wallet and keys were in the bowl on top of the refrigerator. While he was there, he took out the old blood and threw it away to make space and avoid confusion. Better go and say goodbye to Wesley. He hadn’t done that in weeks, just been saying nothing or saying, “I’m going. I’ve had enough of you.” Had to show Wes he’d changed, that he’d be safe to talk to now.</p>
<p>Gunn didn’t get out even the first word, because one look at Wesley showed that the tension was back, and this time he was rigid with it. He’d turned onto his left side with his arm up, covering his face, and he was holding the pillow so tight his tendons had to be aching. Gunn sat on the side of the bed and put his hand on Wesley’s back.</p>
<p>“Is this because you don’t want to eat? You haven’t been eating, have you?”</p>
<p>Stupid to ask more than one question at a time, but he was pretty sure that was a no to both. Something else then. Maybe nothing to do with talking, or Gunn, or Angel, or the blood. Where the hell did you start with this? Could take hours and Gunn really was hungry, but he couldn’t just leave Wesley in that state.</p>
<p>He slid his hand up to Wesley’s shoulder, waited for two slow breaths, then slid it back down. Didn’t feel like Wesley was going to ease up this time. “Y’wanna come with me? Y’not feelin’ too shaky, still.”</p>
<p>Disbelief, and at first Gunn thought that was “hell, no!”, but then Wesley was pushing himself up, and Wesley was so pleased, and so surprised – like he’d looked the very first time that Gunn had hugged him. Gunn got him to go slow, and kept close to him all the way down to the truck. “You feel shaky, you just grab onto me.” And Gunn could tell that he would. Must remember enough about the library not to want that again.</p>
<p>The grocery store was first, and once he’d got parked Gunn said, “Wes? How d’you feel about waiting here? Maybe save doing a big place with a crowd till tomorrow or something? Be quicker. Y’trust me to pick what you like?” All fine with Wesley.</p>
<p>Gunn got six different salads, and two breads, and crackers and cheese and pasta and roast chicken and chips and dips and yoghurt. He was getting in line for a till when he saw a body-building magazine in the racks, and that sent him off for the pharmacy section to look for the tubs of weight-gain powders, and from there back to Dairy to get more milk. He didn’t know what problem Wes had about eating this time – the same one as before, about “pleasure”? – but he did know that Wes would still drink. And “pleasure” wasn’t going to be an issue with this stuff.</p>
<p>Gunn was expecting Wesley to come with him into the butchers, thought it didn’t need saying since they both knew the shop would be quiet. But Wesley stayed put and shook his head when Gunn asked; and everything was still fine.</p>
<p>Wesley had a few mouthfuls of each of the salads, but it looked like really hard work. Gunn would try one of those drinks on him in a couple of hours. When Gunn had finished they put the food away, then Gunn put the kettle on to make tea and said, “D’you think I’d be able to feed him now? How’s he sound to you?”</p>
<p>He’d managed to surprise Wesley again. Wesley stared at him for a couple of seconds, then gave one of his half-smiles and turned to fetch a beaker down from the shelf. Wesley stayed in the kitchen while Gunn was heating the blood, but as soon as Gunn took the beaker out of the microwave he headed straight for the bedroom.</p>
<p>“You don’t have to do that.”</p>
<p>A frown and a shrug, then a nod – looked like “sure I do”.</p>
<p>“I was... I hadta make a point. Got a new one now: I trust you. Y’re not gonna take advantage.”</p>
<p>No, Wesley wouldn’t even think of doing that, but he still preferred to wait in the bedroom.</p>
<p>Angel knew there was something horribly wrong with the blood, that he’d be in agony for days if he drank it, but he was so hungry he either didn’t care or he couldn’t stop himself. He vamped up almost immediately, but he didn’t start reaching out for the beaker until Gunn had put it on top of one of the books and was pushing it within range. After he’d drained it, he wiped the inside with his finger and licked them, and then he tore the beaker apart to get at the last traces down at the bottom. When there was no more he dropped the broken plastic onto the mattress and immediately focussed all of his hunger towards Gunn’s neck. Gunn didn’t think he even knew he was threatening a guard; he didn’t really see Gunn at all, he just smelled the blood.</p>
<p>“There’ll be more tomorrow, Angel.” Probably more today, depending on Angel’s state, but “tomorrow” was always safest with Angel. Gunn didn’t try to retrieve the beaker, but he did take the drawing-pad with the message. No more threats. He still didn’t want them to talk, he didn’t want Wesley to see Angel, but there had to be another way.</p>
<p>Gunn went to the kitchen to finish making the tea. He’d just torn the message out of the pad and put it in the trash when the bedroom door opened. Wesley came straight over and held Gunn tight, rubbing his face against Gunn’s and pressing his lips to Gunn’s cheek. It felt like “Thank you”. Gunn wanted to say that he was sorry but that was complicated – much too far from yes/no territory.</p>
<p>“I’ll feed him again in a couple of hours. Give him a chance to calm down.” Angel was making noises like Angelus stuck in a vision; feeling the richness of the world outside, the blood calling to him. Wesley murmured an agreement and kissed Gunn’s cheek again, but soon he pulled back and took over making the tea.</p>
<p>They sat together on the couch, with Gunn’s arm around Wesley’s waist. Felt like a date – at three in the afternoon.</p>
<p>“We could get a movie tonight.”</p>
<p>A no, with a very slight flinch behind it.</p>
<p>“What if I found something really boring or stupid that you wouldn’t enjoy at all?”</p>
<p>Wesley burst out laughing, had to put his mug down, but it was still a no.</p>
<p>Slowly: “So it’s not because you can’t let yourself enjoy a movie? It’s not that anymore?”</p>
<p>Not really. Wesley shrugged and frowned, like he was trying to decide on something, then he turned till he was half-kneeling on the couch, reached out and touched his fingers gently to Gunn’s throat, then shook his head, face tense.</p>
<p>Gunn had no idea what Wesley was trying to tell him. He covered Wesley’s hand with his own, to keep it there, and laid his other hand on Wesley’s forehead, to smooth away the tension. They stared at one another and Gunn finally said, “You don’t want me to talk?”</p>
<p>No, no, that wasn’t it. Wesley jerked his head in the direction of the television, then closed his eyes and shuddered.</p>
<p>Gunn needed a few more seconds of staring, then: “People talking in movies? You can’t –” Wesley was nodding, over and over, and sighing like he was exhausted. “That’s bad, Wes. That’s really bad.” Wesley knew it. “I... I thought you were just sulking, because I was making you prove...” No. “But this is because of what I...?” A shrug. Not important, or Wesley didn’t know.</p>
<p>“But it doesn’t bother you when I’m talking?”</p>
<p>Wesley didn’t shake his head but instead took his hand away from Gunn’s throat and knelt up, tilting his head sideways to press his lips over Gunn’s larynx; and Gunn gasped and sighed, and thought, “It’s worth it. This is why I can’t leave him. It’s not for him. It’s for me.”</p>
<p>They kissed, and Gunn’s cock was wanting him to pull Wesley down full-length onto the couch, to get his hands inside Wesley’s pants; but Wesley wasn’t ready for that, he just wanted a long, sweet kiss.</p>
<p>“You’re still really tired, aren’t you? You wanna go and lie down again?” Yes, and so they went back to the bedroom.</p>
<p>At first Gunn was thinking only about Wesley, but then he remembered the car still at the library; and he should call Rondell to drop out of training that evening; and how was he gonna test this squad, if Lilah could do what she said?; and where the hell could he take Wesley where there wouldn’t be people talking?</p>
<p>Maybe he got restless, enough for Wesley to tell. Gunn would have said that Wesley had sunk back somewhere, that he wasn’t really thinking anything, but then Wesley shifted up to bring his head next to Gunn’s, and the whisper was straight in Gunn’s ear. “You don’t have to stay. I know you’re not tired. You must have things planned.” A voice that was trying not to exist.</p>
<p>A pause, then Gunn said, “I’d worry about you, if I left you alone. It helps, doesn’t it, me being here?”</p>
<p>“It helps. But you’ve showed me that you want to be here. That’s enough. You don’t have to stay.”</p>
<p>“OK.” Gunn raised himself up on his elbow. “What if I went out to get the car from the library? How’d you be with that?” Slight hesitation, but then coming down on “no problem”. “I’ll bring your phone in. You need me, you call, OK? Don’t have to say a thing. You need me to come in from next door, anywhere.”</p>
<p>Understood. Agreed.</p>
<p>“Y’can’t stand to read either, can you? Not if it’s in English. Or only if it’s work?” Gunn was wondering about keeping Wesley busy, find him something to do apart from struggle to eat and lie on the bed. And no, Wesley couldn’t read.</p>
<p>Gunn called a cab to take him to the library, and once he had the car he drove to Blockbuster, just in case they knew of a movie without any words at all. The clerks seemed to think he was a student with a paper to write, and they sent him to the arthouse section to look for himself; but then after a couple of minutes Gunn heard one of them say, “Oh, yeah!” and then the guy came over and showed Gunn to a French nature documentary. “It’s all this close-up stuff of this one field during this one day. Beatles ‘n’ snails ‘n’ birds ‘n’... everything. No voice-over, nothing.” So Gunn rented that, and the racks of video games had given him another idea. There were plenty of games without words – like most of the games on his computer. OK, so the shoot-em-ups didn’t interest Wesley, but he might enjoy that pipe-laying game, and maybe the card-games. And what about games they could play together at the coffee table, or in the hotel? Gunn went to Toys ‘R’ Us and came away with a set of half-size playing cards, a dice-game, a board-game with numbered tiles and complicated rules about making and keeping sets, and a starter-pack for some dungeons-and-dragons card game. The D&amp;D game definitely had too many words and would definitely involve talking, but it seemed closest to the type of game Wes had enjoyed at school so Gunn was going to bring that out once Wes was well enough.</p>
<p>Wesley and Angel were both asleep. Gunn got a load of laundry going, then moved the computer over to the coffee-table so he’d be able to keep nearby on the couch while Wesley was playing. He didn’t want Wesley sat on his own at the other side of the room, and he especially didn’t want him sat just a few feet from Angel’s door. Then he got a soda and one of Wesley’s notepads and started making lists of what he’d need to ask Lilah’s squad, and what he’d need to tell them.</p>
<p>The laundry had been almost all Gunn’s clothes. Nothing of Angel’s, since he’d been in the same clothes since Gunn had chained him. And Wes... You could see how he’d just given up. Stopped noticing. Or stopped caring. Gunn went in to put the clothes on the bed and found that Wesley had woken up. He offered to bring Wesley a glass of the supplement drink and Wesley accepted, but then Wesley came out to join him while he was using the blender. The powder had been a good call: Wesley drank it easily, no reaction to the taste, not even a pause or a blink. He washed the glass and then Gunn showed him the computer and the games and the movie, and explained what he’d been thinking and why these should be OK. Wesley looked surprised and impressed, but he also had one of his half-smiles, like Gunn had done something unbearably cute. Gunn could ask what but he might not have gotten an answer even on one of Wesley’s best days.</p>
<p>“So I thought we’d have the pasta around seven, then watch the movie. Then try out the games.” Wesley nodded and gave a full smile, then rubbed at his stubble and gestured towards the bathroom, which turned out to mean that he was going to have a bath and get neatened up.</p>
<p>Gunn was on a roll with the good calls. Wesley’s first few rounds with the pipe-laying game were truly lousy, but he kept going back for more; and he laughed and gasped and got thoughtful at the movie, right along with Gunn; and a couple of times in the games Gunn was sure he’d been about to swear and argue. Yes, Gunn would get him better.</p>
<p>Lilah Morgan called on the dot of nine. She had a squad of six, to work in two teams. She’d email their details to Gunn, and she’d booked a workout room for two hours the next morning, for Gunn to put them through their paces.</p>
<p>“I want to ask how Wesley is, but he’s probably standing right next to you.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but we’re doin’ OK.”</p>
<p>“He’s speaking?” Almost breathless, like she’d been worrying all day.</p>
<p>“Not really. But it’ll happen.”</p>
<p>Wesley had no problems with the idea of leaving Angel with the squad, and he trusted Gunn to handle all the details. He must know how much he needed to get away – a hundred times more than when Gunn had made him go to San Diego – and he also trusted Gunn to decide where they went.</p>
<p>Gunn hadn’t gotten to feed Angel again by the time they went to bed: he’d woken up during the evening, but as Angelus, and he’d torn the beaker and the book to shreds, raged for an hour or so about the savour of his kills, and then quickly fallen asleep. In the quiet after their second fuck, Gunn became aware of the sound of movements, repeating but not quite regular.</p>
<p>“I’ll go and check. If it’s safe to feed him. Be easier on the squad if we can get him back to normal.”</p>
<p>Angel was gathering up the scraps on paper and pushing them under the mattress. He knew that Angelus had been there; and he recognised Gunn. “You’re letting them. You’re letting them do it again. Did you make him watch?”</p>
<p>“I’m not letting them do anything. Angelus didn’t hurt anyone, if that’s what you’re thinking. He just found the book in here and tore it up. Look, I’ll clear it away.” Gunn went to get a refuse-bag. Best to deal with it while Angel was calm, because he might not be safe after he’d had his blood. Gunn hauled the mattress out of the way, and Angel helped with as much as he could reach.</p>
<p>Gunn hadn’t stood this close to Angel since he’d chained him up, and he’d been listening to him more than looking at him when he’d gone in to deal with the recorder. Gunn was shocked by the sight of Angel up close, shocked and freaked out, because Angel looked like a corpse. His skin was a fish-belly white, his lips were a blue-grey, and his eyes seemed sunk back in their sockets. No one would ever take him for human, the way he looked now. It was from hunger, wasn’t it? It had to be. How much blood did he need, then, to make him look alive? And how long had he been this bad?</p>
<p>Angel vamped up again when Gunn took the blood into the room, and Gunn used the same method with a book to push the beaker towards Angel. This time, though, Angel didn’t reach for the blood. He stared at it, shaking as he held himself back, and then he changed back to his human face and looked up at Gunn. “How long has it been?”</p>
<p>“Two weeks.”</p>
<p>Angel swallowed. “Was that them? Or was it you?”</p>
<p>“It was me.”</p>
<p>“Because of him.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. And you better tell yourself you got off lightly.”</p>
<p>“Is he... Is he better?”</p>
<p>Gunn looked away, down at the mattress, then back at Angel. “He’s different.”</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t know him.” Angel sounded very sure. Like he finally understood the problems with his memory. Could he do that?</p>
<p>“Yeah. Well. Be better if you forgot him. Forgot everything.”</p>
<p>Angel had seemed so resigned, Gunn thought he’d accept, even agree, but instead his control broke and he vamped up and lunged at Gunn. “Then you don’t show me the sex! We both know you make him different.”</p>
<p>Gunn put his foot on the book and started to pull it out of reach, just in case Angel was angry enough to throw the beaker; and maybe Angel would have been but there was the hunger; and from the first touch to his lips Gunn could see that there was nothing in Angel’s world except the taste of blood. Gunn pulled the book further back, picked it up, and then left the room and locked the door.</p>
<p>Showing him the sex. Like Gunn had made him look at pictures. And Gunn hadn’t gone straight in from their bed, he’d cleaned himself before he went to unlock the door. What was he supposed to do, have a shower and get a robe fresh from the laundry? All ‘cos this is the one vampire who can’t figure out that humans don’t know how they smell? He went back to bed and got to work immediately to get Wesley’s smell back on all the parts that he’d washed.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>In Lilah’s squad, each team had a demon-expert and two fighters, all local to L.A., and they worked well as a team. Gunn tried them on demons, L.A. landmarks, tactics and techniques, based on a combination of old visions, old street-battles, Wyndham Gunn cases, and training sessions with the duals. They were good, and much better than he’d expected at picking up the clues in the visions and putting together a solid plan, and fast.</p>
<p>He’d spend the day putting together the briefing and the set of instructions, and taping samples of Angel in his different states so they’d know when they could go in and feed him and when they should stay out. Angelus was the priority, obviously, but even if he didn’t appear during that day, Gunn was sure he had samples already on the tape. Assuming Gunn got that ready, then the squad would be able to move in at an hour’s notice any time from Friday morning, to stay until the following Sunday. Gunn wanted to leave on Friday, and before he wrote any instructions he was going to get out his roadmap, stick pins in three “possibles”, then get online and make sure of their hotel.</p>
<p>By the time he arrived home, he’d decided not to bother with the map and the other two choices: he was going to take Wesley back to San Diego, because he already knew that San Diego suited Wesley. And this time it would be even better, because they were going to stay in that fancy hotel from the Marilyn Monroe movie - if Gunn could get them a room. Something really special, something on the level of what they deserved. And a course of shock-treatment for Wesley’s guilt-ridden hangups about pleasure ‘cos Gunn was guessing that most of those were still there, lying in wait under the nervous breakdown. He wouldn’t tell Wesley about the hotel. He’d just tell him San Diego and give him the name of some mid-range hotel, one near the ocean.</p>
<p>There were rooms available in the Del Coronado, but the cheapest was more than $300 a night over the weekend. Even with the rate dropping by $100 in the week, if they stayed until the Sunday, that would be nearly $2,500 just for the room - and that was about half of what they had in the bank, and it could take years (and a few miracles) to make that back, because they hadn’t come close to covering their bills since they lost most of their clients.</p>
<p>But it was still the right hotel; Gunn could see himself checking in there with Wesley. So what could they afford? Say half that. So they stay in the Del Coronado for five nights, until the Wednesday (Wesley should be speaking by then, shouldn’t he?), and then they move somewhere cheaper. He made the reservations and printed out a list of the cheaper hotels; they could decide on that once they got there.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Gunn wanted Wesley to pack his suit but Wesley refused, even when Gunn said that the vacation would be like a whole week of dates, and wasn’t that part of the package, when you were lucky enough to get a date with Wesley Wyndham-Pryce? Well, it took more than one “no” to make Charles Gunn give up, and he packed the suit and the shirts himself at the last minute, while Wesley was packing the games and some beer.</p>
<p>Gunn didn’t talk much during the drive. Sometimes a sight along the road would remind him of something that seemed worth telling, and Wesley nodded and acted interested, and laughed when he should. He hadn’t spoken, though, since that time in the bedroom; guess Gunn hadn’t done anything since to make him need to talk.</p>
<p>They got to San Diego just after four, which was the check-in time at the hotel. Gunn was watching Wesley’s reaction as carefully as he could from the moment he took the exit for Coronado, and, really, it couldn’t have been any better, not if Wesley had been giving a running commentary. From the sudden alert interest (“Oh, I remember this”), to the grunt of the first thud of suspicion (“Surely not?”) to the gasp of realisation.</p>
<p>While he’d been imagining checking into the Hotel Del with Wesley, he hadn’t forgotten there would be a clerk looking at the two of them, knowing the keys were for a room with a kingsize bed. Thinking “Fags”. Thinking “Freaks”. And feeling so superior for all the rest of the day, just from knowing he wasn’t one of them. Gunn was prepared: he was going to act like he’d checked in with Wesley to a hundred hotels better than this; and it turned out the clerk was a Hispanic girl and she was good, not even a flicker over Wesley’s arm. Must be telling herself, over and over, that their money was the same colour as anyone else’s.</p>
<p>Wesley spoke about half an hour after they checked in, when they were having their first walk along the beach. He kept on stopping and turning to look back at the hotel, and after one especially-long look he said, “We’re really on holiday. We’re really here.” Not a whisper, his normal voice, and then he turned to look straight at Gunn. “And we really can’t afford this.”</p>
<p>“Nah, we can’t. But we’re here anyway. Least till Wednesday. I say we make the most of it.” He was expecting Wesley to ask about Wednesday, but Wesley just smiled, reached out to touch his arm, and then carried on along the beach.</p>
<p>After the walk they explored the hotel, with Gunn all the time thinking ahead to dinner. When he was sure they’d seen all the restaurants and bars, he asked Wesley where he wanted to eat. “Or we could get room service?” A difficult question for Wesley. He looked up at the beams in the ceiling of the enormous lobby and his expression said, “We’re really here,” and then he looked over at the group of couples standing a few feet away, just arrived and launched into three or four conversations and he was tense again, like Gunn hadn’t seen since Wednesday afternoon. The hotel was getting busy, the weekend starting for real.</p>
<p>“Y’know, let’s make it room service. Maybe come down for a drink later? See what the beach is like late at night.”</p>
<p>The beach was cold, and they had it almost to themselves. They held hands, and Gunn listened to the soft crunching of their footsteps and the long exhalations of the waves, and he wasn’t worrying about Wesley, he wasn’t trying to think of the next thing to do or say. The bar was still too noisy for Wesley; Gunn got two glasses of bourbon and they took them up to their room.</p>
<p>They’d decided to spend Saturday morning at Balboa Park, maybe longer depending on the crowds. They arrived just as the museums were opening, and seemed to be the first through the door at the Folk Art Museum. Gunn got interested in the range of materials: from paper, to leather, to wood, to wool, to clay, to bone; and he started looking for patterns and differences in what the different people had done with the same material. Something else had caught Wesley’s attention, judging by his slow pace and look of concentration, but Gunn couldn’t tell what.</p>
<p>They kept close, though not often together, and in the Russian section it look Gunn a while to realise that Wesley was waiting for him, definitely wanted him to see this yellow wooden duck with the huge, smooth body and tiny pointed head.</p>
<p>“What is it about ducks, do you suppose? I can’t imagine that they’ve ever been essential to any peasant economy, and yet you find ten ducks to every pig and every goat.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded and looked around for ducks. “Maybe they’re just easy to draw. Y’don’t even have to bother with the feet less you feel like it. Leave ‘em off ‘n’ say it’s swimmin’.”</p>
<p>“That’s a good point. Even I can draw a duck. Or a fish. I would never attempt a goat.”</p>
<p>Gunn pointed at the other end of the case. “Lot of frogs, too. Y’know what you were sayin’ ‘bout peasant economies. Go double for frogs, wouldn’t it? Though kind of blows a hole in the easy-to-draw thing.”</p>
<p>Wesley looked thoughtful. “Don’t ducks eat frogs? Maybe the connection – and the importance – would be obvious if we were peasants. We just don’t have that relationship to animals, have never met anyone who does. What’s more striking than the ducks is that there are hardly any images of people here at all. And yet the animals don’t really have any personality. They’re not portraits. Maybe you don’t make portraits of animals you know you’re going to kill.”</p>
<p>So when did people make portraits of animals? They discussed that while they were wandering through the rest of the museum, not really looking at the exhibits any more. Then Wesley brought in children’s books: full of animals, like the museum, with hardly any people. Wasn’t it fascinating that children spent so much of their childhoods identifying with animals - or with characters that were labelled as animals, because of course they were nothing to do with real bears or hedgehogs or mice? And were the animals there because children found it difficult to identify with people? Did they recognise so early on that people were complicated and demanding? And treacherous. Whereas animals were simple. You could build up almost anything about an animal, and you’d never be proved totally wrong. A bear might rip your face off, but it wouldn’t turn around one day and tell you everything it had always found annoying about you, including most of the things that you thought made you friends.</p>
<p>They went around the Museum of Art looking for portraits of animals, and then they had a late lunch in a Thai restaurant in the Gaslight District. They were still talking about children’s books and Gunn suggested they go to Borders because he wanted to show Wesley the Richard Scarry books that he’d grown up with and that they didn’t seem to have in England. Wes loved the drawings and bought one of the books, a really basic word-builder without even a story, though crowded with incidents in every picture. There were nearly as many monsters and imaginary creatures as animals in the books, and that led on, over coffee and then back at the hotel, to what Wesley knew about demon folk-art, and about books and toys for demon children.</p>
<p>They had dinner in the hotel restaurant, with a view of the ocean, played dice and drank beer, had the midnight beach to themselves again, and drank their bourbons in the bar. Wesley fell silent sometimes: in the car, on the beach, or when people moved too close, or seemed to notice them, or suddenly stopped talking, or suddenly started talking. The first few times Gunn thought he might have lost him for the day and that would have been OK, but it was even better to get him back, and to learn that he would be back, that he’d make his way to the surface again after maybe ten minutes, maybe half an hour.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>They had breakfast in their room on Sunday morning, with the plan of spending the whole morning in bed (maybe the entire day). Around eleven Wesley made them some more coffee, and when they had their mugs and were settled against the pillows, Gunn said, “I’ve missed you, Wes. Didn’t realise how much till maybe a few hours ago. Before then…” A sigh. “Hadn’t been thinking much past all the ways it tore me up to see you so bad. Main thing I was thinking about gettin’ you better was how seein’ that would stop me feelin’ torn up. Never got as far as… how good it was gonna be for me to have you back.”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry.” Wesley was frowning so hard, like all he’d heard was “torn up”.</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head, meaning they were past that, the two of them. “D’you know why you got so bad? What’s the best thing I should do if you get that way again?” Wesley was still frowning, but now it was like he was trying to think what to say. “Wes? Do you know why?”</p>
<p>A sigh, then Wesley nodded, several times. He’d gone very tense.</p>
<p>“It’s happened to you before?” Gunn was making a sudden guess. “Way you get when… it’s too much?”</p>
<p>Another sigh, a long one, then Wesley shrugged slightly and tilted his head to the side a couple of times.</p>
<p>Gunn waited about five seconds then said, “Can’t tell for sure if that’s ‘kind of’ or ‘not really’. Or whereabouts in between.” An even longer wait. Wesley was looking hard at him, but Gunn couldn’t read the expression. “ ‘s OK, Wes. Y’don’t hafta pin it down for me. Just… when you’re ready… give me something that’ll help me for next time.”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head sharply, gave a sound like a grunt, then took a deep breath and said, “No. It’s both. It’s ‘not really’ in that… I’ve never had a breakdown before. But a very large part of it was because…” He swallowed. “Because so many things that I thought were in my past… They seemed to be happening again.”</p>
<p>Like being raped? Had that been the start, even before Barney? “Things you’d told me about? Or – Or other things?”</p>
<p>“Things that –” Wesley closed his eyes tight for several seconds, tense almost to the point of writhing. When he opened his eyes, he shook his head hard then said, “Whatever I’d told you, I would have said it as if it didn’t matter any more. Because I thought I’d changed. I’d left it behind.”</p>
<p>Slowly: “Wes. The things you’ve told me about your past… Well, they all sounded just fucking terrible. Not like they didn’t matter, more… like you hadn’t even figured out yet how to get angry enough about them.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” A pause. “What did I tell you about what I was like before I arrived in L.A.?”</p>
<p>“Like in Sunnydale?”</p>
<p>Wesley shrugged, like Sunnydale would do as well as anything else.</p>
<p>“You never told me much. But it sounded like you must’ve been lonely as hell.”</p>
<p>Wesley closed his eyes again, then turned his head hard away from Gunn. Very quietly: “I was useless. I’ve always been useless.”</p>
<p>Gunn shifted onto his side, to be able to put his right arm around Wesley’s waist. “There’s nothing you could tell me that’d make me believe that. Only thing you’ve always been is… with the wrong people. Who never had the sense to see what they could’ve had. What they could’ve learned from you.”</p>
<p>A thin moan, and Wesley was trying to pull away from Gunn, like he was Angel trying to hide. But Gunn clamped his hand around Wesley’s shoulder and forced Wesley back to lie flat on the bed, and raised himself so he could see more of Wesley’s face.</p>
<p>“Wes. Wes. God, I know it still hurts you fierce but… Look, haven’t I always made it better when you’ve let me close? When you stop tryin’ to do it all on y’r own? Tell me what… I dunno… what Sunnydale’s got to do with why you got so bad. With what happened with Angel. With the speaking. Tell me now. Just get it done.”</p>
<p>Wesley slowly turned his head back and looked up at Gunn. Wesley’s bleak, accepting look, that Gunn knew too well. “I know I have to tell you. But I’ve been so scared of losing you.”</p>
<p>The last thing Gunn expected to hear. It’d felt to him during those long, terrible weeks like Wesley hadn’t thought of him more than maybe ten times – and then only when he had to. Quietly: “Because of what happened with Angel?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head, very definite. “Because of what I am. I know you don’t want to believe it but… I’m ashamed of almost everything I did with my life before I came to L.A. And of how I did it. Everyone who met me soon found themselves wishing they hadn’t. Within minutes, for Angel in Sunnydale.”</p>
<p>“And then he changed his mind. When he got to know you properly.”</p>
<p>“No. No. He – He gave me the chance to change. Almost before he started teaching me to fight, he was acting as if he’d forgotten what I used to be like. He was taking me for granted as… someone who was worth the effort to have around. Who’d generally make himself useful.”</p>
<p>Oh. Of course. So that was why Wesley would face anything for his vampire. Why Angel would always come first. Gunn saw it now. Angel hadn’t just saved Wesley’s life, he’d saved him from hating himself. Had Angel known that, when he’d been lucid? Did he know how he’d earned himself that total loyalty?</p>
<p>Gunn stroked Wesley’s arm, trying to think what to say, but Wesley had only paused for a few seconds.</p>
<p>“And then I met you. And having you want me, and finding out that I was able to make you happy… I knew then that I really had changed. It didn’t even hurt to think of what I used to be like, because I felt as if the worst had been cancelled out.” A long breath in, and then out. “And then there was Barney. And I learned that I hadn’t changed at all. I’d never changed. I’d just… managed to put on a shell. So really I’d been deluded as well as useless. And Angel should have seen through it. The way I’d trusted his judgement, he should have seen through it.” Wesley’s voice was getting more and more ragged. Gunn wanted to soothe him, wanted to hush him, but he was sure he’d been right before: Wesley did have to tell him, Wesley did have to get this done.</p>
<p>” ‘n’ you were thinkin’ worse about me? ‘bout my judgement?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. “The man you’d fallen in love with, he’d been real for you. He was… what I would have wanted to be. But now I knew I couldn’t be, I couldn’t hide in the delusion any more. So I didn’t… have any right to your love. And I knew that one day you’d realise what you were living with, and I’d see it, the moment when you stopped being able to love me. I couldn’t try to keep you, of course I couldn’t, I had no right to you. I knew there were things I should be doing to make you go, but I wasn’t strong enough.” Wesley was blinking hard, like he was just managing to fight back tears.</p>
<p>Two months Wesley had been living with that, two months. Gunn got choked himself, swallowed, then took a deep breath. “You tried to tell me, didn’t you? ‘bout feelin’ like a shell. Kept on tryin’ to tell me. ‘n’ I couldn’t stand to hear it. Told you to stop talking. Is that… why you got so bad you couldn’t talk at all?”</p>
<p>“No. That was something else. A separate breakdown. I think I might have been having at least four of them, all at the same time. I’m probably eligible for some sort of award.”</p>
<p>Gunn smiled, just for a second. “Well, I know you’re better on the talking one. How ‘bout the first one? You still feel like I’m gonna see through you? Like you’re stuck back in your past?”</p>
<p>A shrug and a sigh. “I think I’m going to keep on having bad days for a long time to come. I can still feel it dragging me down. It’s… relaxing in some ways just to give up on myself, to let it drag me straight down to the bottom. To tell myself that it’s fate, this is what I was always meant to be.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded. “So that’s how you were thinkin’ whenever you took yourself off to the laundry room. That’s how it started with Angel. I thought you were just… makin’ things worse every way you could.”</p>
<p>“Well, I was.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but I get it now. I thought you were making it all up from nothing since Barney. Which looked scary-crazy, Wes. Looks different when I know you’d been there before.”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry I scared you.”</p>
<p>“I know. But you’ve found a way of fighting back now, right? Like… you have times when you know you’re never gonna lose me? Wes, you’re the exact same man I fell in love with. Even when you were acting craziest, I never for a second thought, ‘Jeez, who is this guy? Think I been suckered. Palmed off with somethin’ in the wrong box.’ It was still you, every fucked-up step of the way. The exact way my Wes would go about having four or five breakdowns.” He moved his hand up and threaded his fingers through Wesley’s hair. “Yeah, it’s hurt like hell to be in love with you these last weeks, not gettin’ the first clue what I could do to help. But you already made me happy again. Even before we got here, you made me happy enough to cancel out all the hurting. Act like you want me with you, like you want more of me, that’s all you gotta do.”</p>
<p>Wesley pulled him down, and they kissed for a very long time. When they finally pulled apart to just lie and look at one another, Wesley said, “This is the reason I’m determined to get better. Why I’m going to fight every inch against the temptation to give up on myself. So I can earn this. Because I want it so much.”</p>
<p>All Gunn could manage to say was “Good. Good,” and then they were kissing again.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>It was lunchtime. Gunn was only aware of how much time had passed when he heard the clattering of crockery starting from the restaurants down below.</p>
<p>“You hungry?” Wesley shook his head. “Me neither. Still kinda feel I should make you eat but... don’t wanna move.” Wesley just smiled. Gunn didn’t think he’d sunk back into not speaking – looked like he was just feeling lazy and peaceful, even more than Gunn. But Gunn started thinking about the bad days that Wesley was going to keep on having, and wondering if some of them were going to be bad enough to bring in all of Wesley’s breakdowns – whatever the other breakdowns had been about. Gunn wished he could leave Wesley to be peaceful, but they both knew now that he’d been right to push Wesley to tell him about the first breakdown. They needed to get this all done. And why not get it done quickly?</p>
<p>“Wes? D’you want to tell me about the other breakdowns? Tell me why you got so you couldn’t speak. Till last Wednesday I thought it was ‘cos you were sulkin’ with me. But I got that totally wrong, didn’t I?”</p>
<p>Wesley took a very deep breath and closed his eyes tight for a second, but he was already nodding, getting ready to tell. “It was about Angel. About what happened when you found out what I’d been doing with him.”</p>
<p>Gunn frowned. “I took away the key. I stopped feeding him.” That was all he’d ever found to do. Apart from walking out and staying out for the rest of the day. But how could that leave a man scared rigid of any kind of talking?</p>
<p>“It wasn’t what you did. It was what you said you’d –” Wesley swallowed. “It was the idea of being gagged. If I tried to talk to him.” Wesley spoke quickly, and then immediately looked down, away from Gunn’s face.</p>
<p>“The idea of – You – You never figured I was bluffing? You were really thinking I’d do that?” Gunn felt cold all over.</p>
<p>“You said you would.” Wesley was still looking away. His voice had gone thin, battered. “You left that message for Angel. You said you would. You... You were expecting to do it every time you listened to the tape.”</p>
<p>“No, man, no. I was bluffing. I never said it to you direct. I know I didn’t. I just said, ‘Here’s what I’ve told Angel.’ So if I ever did catch you then when I didn’t follow through I’d still be open to make it something else. Not have it look like I was backin’ down. Him, yeah, I wanted him to believe it, leave you alone, but I thought you must’ve figured it out inside ten minutes. Didn’t ever mean to do more than shock you. No way I could’ve gone through with it. Jeez, I can’t even make myself say that word! Not when it’s about you. That’d be sick.”</p>
<p>Wesley had closed his eyes. He was frowning deeply, breathing hard. A long pause, then he reached out with his eyes still closed, slid his hand down Gunn’s arm to his wrist, and gripped tight enough to make Gunn wince. Almost a whisper: “You would have had the right. If I’d tried to talk to him after what I’d –”</p>
<p>Gunn put his hand over Wesley’s and stroked his thumb across the knuckles. “No one’s got that right, Wes. Not for anything. You saying you wanted to talk to him? Wanted it bad?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head. He slowly eased his grip on Gunn’s wrist, and then he looked at Gunn. “No. We’d talked enough. More than enough.” A brief frown, looked like pain, and Wesley dropped his gaze again. “He was always in there listening. With your message to tell him – It was the idea… if I did say anything… that he’d hear everything, he’d hear you doing it. And that made the thought of the gagging seem ten times worse than if you and I were the only people who knew about it. But then if he woke to see the message and he didn’t hear me speaking, then he’d probably think that you’d already done it. He’d imagine me at my desk like that or – or – or – He’d imagine it. I could feel him in there listening. Waiting to hear you do it or to find out if you’d already done it. And if I spoke, to show him I wasn’t gagged, then I would be talking to him. Whoever I spoke to, whatever I said, it would really be meant for him. So my voice…” He shook his head, over and over. “Making the decision to speak.” A shaking sigh. “It seemed like an impossible responsibility, for me to make that decision. Just thinking about it… I’d go frozen with panic. It got worse every day. My throat felt sealed up. Full of stones. I couldn’t use it. I couldn’t let myself use it.”</p>
<p>Gunn remembered Wesley lying on the bed after Lilah brought him back from the library. Gunn had asked Wesley to speak to him (begged him, almost), and Wesley had looked at him so seriously – he’d been wanting to speak, hadn’t he, for Gunn’s sake? – and then Wesley had looked towards Angel’s room and he’d started writhing with tension. Panic. God, yeah, that was panic. Wes scared so bad he’d locked himself down to just one rule. So that was the second breakdown. And Gunn had made it happen.</p>
<p>Gunn brought his hand up very slowly, brushed his fingertips down Wesley’s cheek, then touched them to Wesley’s throat – the lightest touch he knew how to give. Wesley looked at him, as serious as he’d been after the library, then started to stroke the inside of Gunn’s wrist, his touch as slow and careful as Gunn’s. They knew how to reassure each other. They knew how to trust each other with touch. They always had.</p>
<p>Gunn was the first to speak, brought back again to thinking about Wesley having bad days, about finally starting to help Wesley through this. “Is it being so far away from him here? That’s why you got your voice back? You know he can’t be listening? It’s safe?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “I would have thought I’d need a month away from him to really believe it. To feel safe enough. But then I would never have guessed that I’d react like that to the idea of the gag. I – I suppose it’s seemed like my real mission in life for so long: to try to imagine what he’s thinking. These days we’ve had here... I think this is the first time in the year and more that I’ve been in love with you that I’ve been able to spend enough of my thoughts on you as a worthwhile partner should. As I know you’ve always done with me, even when I’ve been doing least to deserve it. Here... Angel’s finally far enough away that there’s nothing I could possibly do. He’d finally not my problem. I hadn’t even realised until now how much of my attention I was always... holding in reserve for him. Or how much more I would like myself when I was spending it properly on you.”</p>
<p>Gunn smiled but shook his head. “I like you both ways, Wes. I don’t need you to think about me just like I think about you. I’m not keepin’ score. You could give me half of this, a tenth, I’d be happy. ‘n’ it’s not like... you got me so starved, I’ll take any scraps. Doesn’t feel like scraps. Even when you’re doin’ your craziest stuff with him I know I’m the only one you’d be choosin’ to think about if you had a normal life.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>They finally started to get hungry around two, and Gunn volunteered to get dressed and go see what the hotel had in the way of portable food. He came back with a couple of wraps, a salad, and some orange juice. He also got a newspaper, though he wasn’t sure if Wesley had recovered enough to be able to read properly. Seemed like Wesley was fully recovered, and after the headlines he went straight to the movie listings, and they soon decided they’d spend the rest of the afternoon walking around the island, go to the 7 p.m. showing of “Ocean’s Eleven”, and then find the seafood place that Wesley had enjoyed when he was in San Diego on his own.</p>
<p>Over their late-night drink in the hotel bar, Wesley said he was getting the restless feeling that went with not having any proper books within reach – where “proper” meant enough to get him through a six-hour delay in an airport – so they’d go to Borders in the morning, and then Wesley would settle somewhere and read for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Gunn wanted to check out some of the hotels for Wednesday, just to get it out of the way. No need to make reservations, he was pretty sure; there wasn’t going to be a sudden rush on hotel rooms, not between a Monday and a Wednesday, so they wouldn’t lose anything by keeping their options wide open.</p>
<p>Gunn said, “Damn, it’s good to have you reading again. To watch a regular movie with you again. That not-speaking... It really dug in deep.”</p>
<p>Wesley pulled a face, which Gunn had been expecting, then quickly glanced around the room, shook his head sharply, and frowned even more deeply. “My problems with reading and with...” A sigh. “And with speech from other people. That was... a descent into an all-consuming paranoia. Whereas my problems with my own speech were in the form of a paralysing state of panic. It was connected to my past, but... in a different direction from my conviction that I was going to lose you. But I’d rather tell you when we’re back in bed.”</p>
<p>Gunn nodded, laid his hand briefly over the back of Wesley’s hand, and Wesley smiled and brought the conversation back to George Clooney.</p>
<p>Wesley wanted to kiss first, though he warned Gunn that he probably wouldn’t want sex that night. “The paranoia... I think it’s closest to me still than any of the other problems. And it makes me feel very... disconnected. As if none of my nerves really belong to me. Even with you here saying all the right things, I’m going to be in a strange state by the time I’ve finished telling you about it.”</p>
<p>Gunn shook his head. “Back in L.A., when I was figurin’ out where to take you, I never thought you’d even be talkin’ by now. You’re workin’ so damn hard, Wes, t’get y’rself better. ‘n’ it feels like most of that’s for me.”</p>
<p>Gunn thought Wesley must have been planning since the bar how he was going to tell it. When he pulled back from the kiss, he only paused for a few seconds. His voice was quiet, but it was steady, determined. “It was the tape. Having the tape set there in Angel’s room. It took me back to a time in my life when the people around me refused to speak to me. Anything I tried to -” A sigh. “They wouldn’t trust me. They’d never trust me. They’d all decided exactly what to think of me. They’d act as if I didn’t exist, and when they talked about me, it really was as if they didn’t know I could hear.”</p>
<p>“That’s when the bastards were treating you like you were a management spy? That’s the time you meant when you told it to me like that?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded then swallowed. “I felt like a thing. As if I truly didn’t exist in the same world as them. And having the tape in there judging me. Not trusting me. And the way that whenever you came home you’d go straight in there and listen to what it had to say about me, while I was...” A deep breath. “While I was shut away somewhere else so you didn’t even have to look at me. And I know that wasn’t why you had me go to the bedroom. And I know I’d betrayed you, I’d given you so many reasons not to trust me. Everything you did was entirely reasonable. The rational part of me truly wanted to give you anything you asked, and was astounded that you were asking so little. But that rational part just couldn’t get in control of what was happening in my mind.”</p>
<p>“Sounds like... tryin’ to hang a picture straight while there’s an earthquake goin’ on.”</p>
<p>Wesley laughed. “Yes. And while you’re standing in quicksand.”</p>
<p>“So you thought I was like one of those ‘management spy’ guys? Really feelin’ that hard about you? Like you’d never get me to trust you? I’d never really give you a chance?”</p>
<p>Wesley shook his head hard. “That would still be giving me too much credit for rational thought. In my mind, the tape itself was those people from my past. It was the tape that was listening to me and judging me and deciding that I had no place in the world with the... with the real people. And it was right. I couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t right. And all around me there was the proof of how real people took up their world together. Speaking to each other and hearing each other and seeing each other as real. And it was... And it was sinister and pathetic for me to keep on trying to spy on them. It was time for me to... It was long past time for me to take myself off to the place that had been set up for me. Or – that didn't have any choice except to take me. It was time for me to accept. But it – it hurt. Seeing the real people so busy talking to each other. Writing things for each other. And knowing that in the place I belonged... That I was the only thing that would ever be sent there.”</p>
<p>A hell dimension. That was how Wesley was thinking, wasn’t it? He thought he belonged in the cell next to Angel – but where the guards would lock the door and then never think of him again.</p>
<p>“It hurt you just to see a book?”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded slowly. “A book in English or... in a language that living people spoke. But if it didn’t belong in this world either – because it was dead, or because it was spoken by demons – then it wasn’t spying and the book...” A long sigh. “It felt as if the book wanted me to read it. Had been waiting for me. And I thought that... I might manage to accept my place if there were books like that there. I could use their thoughts, I could fill my mind with them. I’d never have to find myself alone, to have to look at my own thoughts.”</p>
<p>“I’m guessin’ you even stopped thinking in English.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “After about a week. My mind... fitted itself to Dirkou. I don’t know why it chose that.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. You started speakin’ it in your sleep. Started speakin’ somethin’, anyway. First few days you’d been whisperin’ in English. Shushin’ yourself, really tense. Really needin’ to speak, c’n see that now, but back then... I wasn’t gonna give an inch, I wasn’t gonna spend one more second thinkin’ ‘bout what was goin’ on with you – not till you fell in with every step I was set on for how you were gonna pay me back over what you’d done with Angel.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Charles. I wanted that as much as you did. With every part of me. There’s no part of me that’s so... deranged that it wants to give you one ounce less that you deserve. I never lost sight of what I should be doing. But there was a wall between the person I wanted to be, the person you should have, and I made myself so many promises but I couldn’t seem to control... I only seemed to have one way of reacting. Even when I could see it hurting you.”</p>
<p>Gunn pulled Wesley close and held him tight, and made himself promises about the ways he’d do better by Wesley in the future. Christ, he couldn’t have done much worse over this. He’d told Lilah that Angel messed Wesley up, but that was nothing to what he’d done himself with the gagging and the tape.</p>
<p>“How long d’you think we’d’ve kept on like that? Another week? Another month, even? If Lilah had kept on givin’ you work in your dead languages. That’s what pushed you over, wasn’t it? When she told you she wasn’t gonna give you another one.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded. “I don’t remember much about what happened at the library. I don’t think I really knew who Lilah was. She was just... the method that the pages used to reach me. So they could turn themselves into my thoughts, and then into more thoughts and more pages. I remember the feeling that... they’d given up on me and that I – I had to get away from myself before...” A shrug. “I don’t know. I think I had some idea of going looking for more pages. Finding another supply.”</p>
<p>Gunn told Wesley what he knew about the meeting in the library – all the reasons Lilah could never have given him the next piece of work. “She said you came alive when you were speakin’ that language. When you couldn’t even look at her before. So she just let you talk, she couldn’t bring herself to stop you. You were like that with me when you were talking in your sleep. Been whisperin’ in English, actin’ really messed up. But then when you switched to that language, you were havin’ normal conversations. Yeah, you came alive.”</p>
<p>Wesley was nodding. “I’ve never gone so far before that I couldn’t bear to read English, but finding another language to think in has always been my surest way of escaping. Of making myself indifferent to... the judgement of the people around me. I was... I was probably quite close to a breakdown in the first three months after my family got me – I’d been happy doing research. I was good at it. I knew what to do. And the people... they were happy to have me working with them. Being moved from that to – I did try to break through, I did. But it just seemed to give them more to -”</p>
<p>He closed his eyes, then shook his head hard and took a deep breath. “But then I found that books would still talk to me. And that a new language would put me in a state of total concentration. I could shut out everything for hours, I could forget what I’d felt during the day. I’ve always had that but now there was... When I stopped thinking in English then it was like being in a different world, with different rules. Different values. Where I could speak and they were outside. Not that they wanted to be inside, but the few times they showed me any respect, it was because of my work on linguistics; they admitted that I did work. And with other linguists, I started making contacts again. Not really friends, I – I seemed to have lost that. But when we kept to our languages then there were always things we could talk about. So the languages were a refuge for me on every level. Back then I felt as if they saved my sanity. This time I think... they allowed me to pretend to function for long enough to... give my diverse collection of neuroses the chance to really bond as a creative team.” He was shaking his head, looking exasperated. “You’d asked me what I was doing with the packs of blood. Would you believe I was drinking it? I was drinking it cold. I was trying to live on it.”</p>
<p>Yeah, Gunn could believe that. “Was that ‘cos I wasn’t feedin’ him? Was that another way I messed you up?” He wasn’t ever going to tell Wesley the other things he’d believed about the blood, how he’d spied on Wesley from the truck.</p>
<p>“No, it wasn’t to do with him. Or with you. Except that... he’s not a real person either. And that’s what he drinks. So it was part of... accepting where I belonged. Normal food... I thought it would turn to ashes if I tried to put it in my mouth. In a way, I simply didn’t believe in it any more. Not as something that had any meaning for me.”</p>
<p>Gunn frowned and pulled a face, trying to push away the thought of the taste: the ashes, and the cold blood. “Yeah, man. You gotta break up that team. Stop ‘em creatin’. Or send ‘em to work writin’ some off-the-wall cult sitcom. Just get ‘em out of the house.”</p>
<p>A brief laugh. “I’ve booked a cab to take them to the airport. And I’ll definitely be changing the locks. And I think they’re all too self-conscious and inhibited to come back and yell abuse up at our window in the middle of the night.”</p>
<p>Gunn’s turn to laugh. “I’d be straight down there, seein’ ‘em off.” Then he turned serious and reached up to lay his palm along Wesley’s cheek. “What d’you feel now, Wes? ‘bout that idea that you don’t belong. What sort of hold’s it got on you?”</p>
<p>Wesley looked thoughtful. Slowly: “It’s similar to the idea that I’d never changed after all. That you’d fallen in love with a shell. They’re very closely related. And my answer to both is that I want to change, I want to belong. For you first of all: to deserve you, to be less of a burden on you, so you only have to worry about me... a normal amount. But also because I think it’s wrong for me to keep on trying to hide. With the exception of... the mistake I made with Barney, I’ve done most good in the world in the times when I’ve been most contented with myself. And I’ve done most harm in the times when I’ve despised myself. So I’ll leave other people to hold out for the ideals of natural justice. As they might apply to me. And I’ll concentrate instead on... the approach that seems most likely to produce positive results.”</p>
<p>Had he even started to believe what Gunn had told him: that he’d been with the wrong people? But then Gunn had told that to him just once, and those other people had been telling him their things for most of his life.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Wesley got a couple of history books in Borders (on religion and on salt), and after lunch he took the salt book down to the courtyard. Gunn spent an hour in the fitness centre, then bought coffee for both of them. He’d meant to stay just for a few minutes, but the courtyard really was peaceful, like he and Wesley were the only people who’d ever found it, and he fetched a deck of cards from their room and sat crossways on a bench and played solitaire. Wesley read him odd facts from the book, and Gunn wondered how long it would be before he’d be taking this for granted: the ordinary quiet-evening-at-home stuff of being a comfortable, well-matched couple.</p>
<p>They stayed nearly until sunset, when most of Wesley’s light for reading was coming from the hotel rooms above him. As they were leaving to watch the sunset from the beach, Wesley pointed to a chair on the far side of the courtyard.</p>
<p>“That’s where I was sitting when I got the idea for the survey.”</p>
<p>Gunn felt a jolt of shock – at just the mention of the survey, at the idea that he’d forgotten. Two days ago the shock would have been bad enough to make him want to take himself off to bang his head against a wall and mutter “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” - because he never would have brought Wesley to this hotel if he’d remembered. But then two days ago he’d still had no clue what had gone wrong with Wesley, and he’d been working on sheer hope that he’d be able to put it right. And two days ago Wesley wouldn’t have felt strong enough to say that word.</p>
<p>“Was a good idea, Wes. Lot of people thought so. For the right reasons.”</p>
<p>Wesley nodded, serious and thoughtful. “Of course I’d want it undone but... I didn’t know. Back then I didn’t know. I couldn’t know. It would have been alright if I’d just thought properly about Barney. Or about the Kungai. I was so wrong about the Kungai. We should have been working together. It shouldn’t have died.”</p>
<p>“No one was thinking properly about Barney, Wes. He probably thought you’d never admit to anyone about your mistake. ‘stead he’s on Wanted posters in every demon bar in the country. He’s gotta be wishin’ he’d left you alone. Didn’t sound to me like he was lookin’ to retire on this one.”</p>
<p>Gunn felt like he’d put that point to Wesley a hundred times, but this time Wesley was letting himself think about it. Maybe that was even a nod, though as small a nod as you could get. Eventually Wesley said, “We should find out what’s happening with the investigation.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. We’ll call Swift when we get home.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>Gunn fell asleep very happy that night, but he was awake again a few hours later, and there was a cold weight in his guts and it turned out that was about a lot of things, but first of all it was about running out of time at the hotel. Only one more full day, and then they’d have to leave, and Gunn was dreading every part of packing up and checking out, how they wouldn’t have their space there anymore.</p>
<p>Stupid, because the next hotel would be fine. OK, it might not have a bar but they could buy a bottle of bourbon. And it might not be on the beach or have four restaurants and twenty shops, but they’d have just as good within a ten minute drive. And Wes could sit and read by the pool. It would be fine. Yeah, on that first day Wesley had needed the Wow! effect of the Hotel Del to believe he was really on vacation, he was really that far away from Angel, but was Gunn really scared that Wesley was about to get dragged back into his silence and his panics and his paranoia, all because he’d had to move to an ordinary hotel?</p>
<p>No, he couldn’t imagine that for a second. Sure, the new hotel would be a major comedown, you’d expect some sort of adrenaline crash after the stuff they’d dealt with since Friday, but that would go for both of them, and they’d just go to a movie, drink too many beers with the dice game, and get over it. Dreading having to leave: that was something else.</p>
<p>OK then. Imagine you’ve got another $1,250 to spare, imagine you can stay after all.</p>
<p>And he found that he went straight to imagining how he’d be lying awake on Friday night, knowing that Saturday was their last full day, and the lobby would be swarming on Sunday morning when they checked out with everyone else and drove back to L.A. and he put his hand over his face and pressed hard, as his guts clenched to the point of nausea.</p>
<p>So. Nothing to do with the new hotel, then. Everything to do with going back home. Moving to the new hotel... Guess his gut must know what that meant about how their time was running out.</p>
<p>Back home. Which was back to Angel. Back to another mammoth shift of wall-to-wall Angel. Who wouldn’t be dreading that?</p>
<p>He was gonna have to let them talk to each other, wasn’t he? Sure, he could tell himself he knew how to do it now: no tape, no threat. Just trust Wesley because Wesley understood that Gunn needed them not to talk, Wesley wanted to make everything up to Gunn. But Wesley’s mind had too many tricks, Wesley had too many issues about talking and words and trust (and God knows what else), and once they were back there he’d soon work out another way to go crazy, another way that Gunn would be the last to recognise.</p>
<p>“Angel messes him up.” A whisper, almost without breath. The main argument against letting them talk: that Angel would say things that brought up even worse problems (“I won’t kill him. He doesn’t want me to kill him.”).</p>
<p>Yes, yes, but that was only a possibility, whereas it was definite that Gunn had got himself nothing, made nothing any better by trying to tell Wesley what to do. So he had to leave Wesley free to choose for himself, and hope that Wesley didn’t want to be messed up, not any more – that he’d walk out, that he’d yell at Angel to stop – and that he’d turn straight to Gunn for help, for comfort, he wouldn’t think for a second of covering up. Well, Wesley knew now that there wasn’t any need to cover up: Gunn wouldn’t really do anything, nothing more than letting Angel go hungry for a few days. Gunn still felt that he’d failed himself there. He should have taken Angel on, evened the score, his first chance that first day he’d found out. He’d have to keep telling himself that it was a good trade: a few points off his pride (and no one but him knew they were gone), and he’d won back the chance that Wesley would start telling him the truth about Angel.</p>
<p>Giving up on telling Wesley what to do... That didn’t just mean giving up the tape, making himself not care if they talked. It meant giving up any idea of controlling what could and couldn’t happen in that apartment. If he tried to hold anything back, then he’d have to answer to himself for sabotage. So he’d put the key to Angel’s door back on the hook, and what happened between them... Well, it wouldn’t be any of his business.</p>
<p>Not even if Wesley still had days that were bad enough that he wanted to get hurt?</p>
<p>He couldn’t decide that on his own. He couldn’t decide it cold. He and Wesley would have to talk that through – before they went home, while Wesley was still thinking clearly. Might as well be tomorrow. Put Wesley’s mind at rest, if he’d been worrying too about going home.</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>They ordered breakfast in their room, and while Wesley was pouring the coffee Gunn got the padlock keys from the bag. He sat down, pushed the keys across the table towards Wesley, and said, “They’re the keys to Angel’s chains. And to the lock I put on the screen. You can do what you like with them. And with him. I should never have tried to stop you. It was never gonna work.”</p>
<p>Wesley slowly picked up the keys, then held them in his palm like he was waiting for some proof that they were real.</p>
<p>“You trust me that much?” Hoping, but not daring to believe.</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged and sighed. “Oh, Wes, I dunno. Doesn’t matter. I need you to be happy with me more ‘n’ I need to trust you. I know y’always want more of me. Keep me believin’ that and... “ Another shrug. “I’ll deal with the rest. Won’t tell you what to do no more. Can’t make you live like that.”</p>
<p>Wesley put the keys down and in the next moment was kneeling by Gunn’s chair, sliding his arm around Gunn’s waist and pressing his face to Gunn’s chest. Gunn held him, very loose, just the weight of his arms.</p>
<p>“Charles. Charles.” Wesley’s voice was tight, almost shaking. “You’re more than good. After all that’s... It’s heroic.”</p>
<p>“Well...” Gunn tightened his hold on Wesley’s shoulder and began stroking the back of Wesley’s neck. “ ‘s like what you said about results. If it’s not workin’, then you gotta make yourself stop doin’ it. Can’t say it’s gonna be easy. But nothing’s normal here, Wes. Him bein’ crazy, with whatever ideas it is he’s got about you. You bein’ in such a bad way. How we can’t get away from each other. Nothin’s normal. I don’t get to act like you see on Oprah. I don’t get even half of what I want. But what’s worst is... Wes, how d’you feel now about when he was hurtin’ you? Is that part of the shell thing? The not-belongin’ thing? You able to handle it the same way? Or you gonna need some extra help? There’s somethin’ else you need to tell me?”</p>
<p>Wesley raised his head. “It was the shell thing. It was every part of the shell thing all mixed in together. I wanted to be punished. And I wanted to think the worst of him because… he’d been wrong about me, he’d been taken in by me. He’d been the one who could have worked it out about Barney and the Kungai, but he’d been stupid and he’d believed me. He’d never been… what I’d thought. He’d been another shell. And he knew exactly what I was thinking and feeling about what I was, what I’d done. He agreed with me. He could bear to hear it, when you wouldn’t put up with it, you wouldn’t let me talk like that...” A long sigh, and Wesley closed his eyes for several seconds. “I couldn’t stop myself from thinking like that, Charles. I was always thinking like that. And he... I could say it to him and know I wasn’t hurting him. Indeed, I was giving him… a chance to compare notes.”</p>
<p>Gunn gave a long sigh then shook his head slowly. “Still don’t know that I can bear to hear it. What we gonna do about that, Wes? If you have days where you’re wanting it again?”</p>
<p>“I’ll tell you. That I’m having one of those days, not the details of what I’m thinking. You should hide the key from me. It would probably be a good idea if we went out for some hard training. Not to get me hurt, I’d never involve you in that, but to… take me out of myself. The less leisure I have to think, the better.”</p>
<p>“OK.” Gunn was nodding. “OK. You gonna tell him it’s never gonna happen again?”</p>
<p>“Of course. As soon as we get back.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. You think he’s gonna be difficult? Angry ‘bout havin’ it taken away?”</p>
<p>“I’m not sure. I’ll be very careful until I’ve seen…” A sigh. “I’m sure you don’t want to know this but it really wasn’t what he wanted from me. He knew perfectly well that I was using him to get my punishment. And he could do it, he could enjoy it because he does have that side to him. But he never said anything to suggest that he was… making anything of it. I mean that he was… telling himself stories about it, planning things he could do to – to heighten the experience for himself.” A wince – almost a flinch. “I’m sorry, I – But I don’t want you to be… more angry with him than you need to be.”</p>
<p>Gunn shrugged. “I’m angry with all three of us. Think we all needed droppin’ on our heads. We gotta stop actin’ on bein’ angry. Actin’ on bein’ scared. Gotta start sayin’ to each other, ‘Look. I know how you’re feelin’. I hear it. I get it. But what you’re doin’… It’s never gonna make things any better.’ Wish you could’ve said that to me about the tape. And him… maybe he was even plannin’ how he could make you stop.”</p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p>They’d agreed days ago that they’d have dinner in the hotel on their last night – with cocktails and wine and everything, and no issue about driving. When they went up to their room to get ready, Gunn brought out the suit and asked Wesley if there was any chance that he’d changed his mind.</p>
<p>Wesley looked between Gunn and the suit, frowning hard. Gunn was about to shrug, put the suit back like it was an impulse thing, but then Wesley said, “It means a lot to you.”</p>
<p>“You look so fine like that. Gives me a kick, seeing you on show. ‘n’ lookin’ so English, like there’s a forcefield round you. ‘n’ all the time you’re mine, ‘n’ I c’n walk straight through.”</p>
<p>“I’d like to... I’d like to...” Wesley’s fingers brushed the lapel; maybe he hadn’t even meant to touch, but his hand was shaking. “I wish I could think of another way of looking like that for you. But – I feel ill at the idea of putting it on. It was with me that Sunday. For the meal with Barney.”</p>
<p>“Oh!” Gunn took a step back in recoil, stood frozen for several seconds, then practically threw the suit into the wardrobe and then slammed the door. “Jeez! How’d I forget that? Damn, I shoulda seen it. Just.. freaked me out so bad when you’d come back from the thrift shop. Couldn’t see past how you were in these other guys’ clothes.”</p>
<p>Wesley stepped forward, grabbed Gunn by the wrist and pulled him close. “I’m glad you forgot. And you were right to be freaked out. You weren’t seeing a guilt-stricken man having a direct visceral reaction to a particular painful reminder. You were seeing an instrument of fate indulging in a dramatic gesture of renunciation. I was disgusted by all of my old clothes. Now...”</p>
<p>“It’s just about Barney. It’s just about the suit.”</p>
<p>“Exactly.”</p>
<p>“So you’ll throw out those damn, fuckin’ cords when we get home?”</p>
<p>Wesley laughed. “We’ll have a ritual burning.”</p>
<p>But while Gunn was in the shower, Wesley went and got dressed in the suit. Gunn stood in the doorway to the bathroom and stared and stared, while his cock jerked higher and higher.</p>
<p>“It’s as good as you remembered?” Half-smiling, half-anxious.</p>
<p>“Yeah, but –” A brief sigh. “OK, I’m not even gonna guess what happened. Just convince me you’re still somehow gonna enjoy the meal.”</p>
<p>“It’s because I know I am that...” Wesley closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath. “You’re more important to me than what happened with Barney. Yes, I have that memory for this suit but I won’t let it take away the good memories I have from you. Or scare me out of ever dressing for you again the way I want to. If I’m going to start again, then there couldn’t be a better evening.” He swallowed, and his tone changed. “And Charles, if you can face giving me those keys, then I can certainly face a few minutes of feeling queasy. Until the gin-and-tonic arrives and you start making me laugh.”</p>
<p>Gunn had always felt cheated out of a beer the few times he’d been somewhere they only had wine. And he could have had beer but Wesley really liked good wine, and really missed being able to open a bottle of it with a meal – open it and enjoy it properly because there was no idea of being on call for the visions. He couldn’t drink a whole bottle, and Gunn wanted to drink the same as Wesley anyhow. Wesley chose a white wine, very smooth, tasted kind of like melons; Gunn found it too fussy at first, not clean like beer, but he’d got used to it by the time their entrées arrived. He did make Wesley laugh, and Wesley made him laugh, and their hands were touching in some way across the table for about half the meal. Wesley even joined Gunn in having a dessert (if you could call a fruit salad a dessert, without even any cream).</p>
<p>Over coffee and liqueurs Wesley said, “Let’s go home tomorrow. Anything else is going to be a sad anti-climax. Let’s save the money and go home.”</p>
<p>Gunn had not seen that coming. He looked down at his cup, moved his hand away from Wesley’s to play with his spoon, spinning it, rocking it back and forth. Finally, sitting back in his chair: “You want to use those keys.”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed and sat back also, and ran his hand slowly through his hair. “I’ll be glad when he’s free, yes. But if I’m in a hurry to get back to him, it’s for the same reason that I put on this suit: because I’m very apprehensive about dealing with him, about the state he’ll be in. I don’t know what he’ll remember, what he’s imagined, what he’ll want. I have to make him manageable. And I’m as ready now as I’ll ever be. I don’t need any more time here. Not right now. If we can save our money for something else, save Lilah’s goodwill... A couple of days away maybe, every few months... Wouldn’t you rather look forward to that?”</p>
<p>Good reasons. Gunn didn’t think they were the real reasons, but there wasn’t much he could argue; he’d just have to get home and see how Wesley acted with Angel and then... Well, probably see that he’d been right but why start another argument? “I’ll call Lilah. When we’re somewhere more quiet.”</p>
<p>They called from the beach and Wesley made the call since it seemed the simplest way of letting Lilah know they were coming back because he was fully recovered, not because their vacation had gone wrong. He gave his apologies and his thanks, answered her questions about what they’d been doing, and said they’d be back between two and four on Wednesday afternoon. He didn’t ask anything about Angel.</p>
<p>They made the walk long, their longest yet; and slow because they kept stopping and turning to look or to kiss. The sex was long too; slow where they wanted it slow, but also fast and surprising and noisy. Gunn slept a perfect sleep, no 3 a.m. dread, no thoughts about Angel.</p>
<p>In the morning they showered together, had breakfast in the restaurant over the L.A. Times, had a last walk on the beach, a last coffee in the courtyard, and checked out around eleven. Wesley insisted on driving, like he’d insisted on taking the suit in his own luggage; he was all better now, and he wanted to get home.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Angel had had a vision on Saturday night while Gunn and Wesley were in San Diego. The vision was of a vampire killing a young man, with some connection to an all-night diner at Vermont and Wilshire. Two of the drawings had shown the man sitting in a booth, one from a viewpoint inside the diner a few booths away from the man, and the other from outside, across the street and from the second floor. Lilah’s squad never found out the man’s name, but he was a regular at the diner, came in most nights around three. On that Saturday night the vampire came down into the street at 3.20 and went to lie in wait by the man’s car. It had been tracking other regulars, from things it said when the squad got it cornered: sounded like it had already taken at least two, but they hadn’t found any proof, not from asking in the diner, not from the news, not from the vampire’s apartment. The three in the squad were still arguing among themselves about whether that had been the vampire playing mind-games with them: what could be so special about the guy in the pictures, if he was worth a vision and there’d been others before who weren’t?</p><p>Before the vision, they’d been able to tell when Angel was lucid: he was very wary of them, but he would talk to them, asking his questions about Wesley and Gunn, and answering most of their questions about his state of mind and his level of comfort. After the vision, though, he wouldn’t respond to them at all. He knew they were there, but they were only sure of that because he’d never reach for the blood while they were in the room, always waited until they’d left.</p><p>They felt sorry for him, which Lilah and her interns had never managed. They’d noticed for themselves how often Lilah called him just “the seer” – like there was nothing to him except his visions. But never to think about the price he was paying for the visions... Did she think it was nothing, that he should be grateful? Or was she like that because he was a vampire? She’d never once thought of him as a person?</p><p>“Does it get easier? You get used to it?” Doug was the blackest of the two black fighters. Ex-army, and still held himself like he was on a parade-ground. He and Gunn were storing equipment in the trunk of his car.</p><p>Gunn shrugged. “Y’picked the wrong guy to ask. I’ll get up in the mornin’ thinkin’, “OK, from now on in, I’m gonna have this attitude to him, just this one. That’ll work. ‘n’ then I’ll go to bed with the opposite, ‘n’ feel like I’ve been dragged through five others in between. You wouldn’t do this job again, watchin’ him? You had enough?”</p><p>No, Doug would watch Angel again, they all would, but they’d be lying awake nights wondering about Angel: what had happened to him, what would happen to him. And they hadn’t expected that, for Angel to get under their skin, not from how Lilah and Gunn had talked about him in the briefings. Yeah, Doug would think about what warning Gunn could have given him that he would have believed.</p><p>The key was back on the hook and Wesley was standing in front of Angel’s door, but Angel was asleep. Gunn put his arms around Wesley from behind and they both looked up at the screen.</p><p>Wesley said, “We should take him for a shower before we set him free. He needs clean clothes. I think we should let him wash himself, if he’ll admit to hearing the order. Having one of us get in with him...”</p><p>“None of us are ready for that.”</p><p>“No.” Wesley turned to face Gunn, put his arm around Gunn’s waist. “We’re still on holiday. While there’s nothing to be done with him, we’re still on holiday. I want to cook... whatever you want to eat. And then watch a film and finish by beating you soundly at Yahtzee.”</p><p>Gunn wanted pepperoni pizza and cherry pie with ice-cream. Wesley went out on his own to the grocery store, and Gunn unlocked their bedroom, unpacked for both of them, checked their email, and then patrolled the living-room and the kitchen looking for the signs of what Doug and the others had been doing during the days and nights. Reading about demons. Drinking coffee. Surfing the net. Looking at Angel’s drawings of Wesley; that was after the vision, probably, which could have got them wondering how many pads Angel had filled with his drawings.</p><p>Gunn kept returning to the key on the hook. He didn’t take it off, he wasn’t going to open the door, but the second time he went back he put his hand over it, and held it to the wood, feeling the teeth against this palm and the end of the hook hard between his knuckles and he started to get an erection. Control over Wesley. Wesley in that room and out of his control, and they could be doing anything and he’d never know. As long as Wesley came back to him without bruises, he could imagine anything and he’d never know. Maybe he should take it as something that happened to Wesley in another life. A life where Wesley didn’t have that family, didn’t get sent to that school, where Gunn could have and keep his fantasies about Wesley’s hot, sweet first fuck. A different Wesley. Gunn closed his eyes, pulled his hand slowly down across the key, and whispered, “But he’d still love me. I’d be the one he dreamed about. Where he had to be.”</p><p>He was waiting for the sound of the car, and he went straight down to help carry. In the kitchen he stopped Wesley from reaching for the kettle and said, “Will you leave it? Come to bed? Last half hour, can’t think of anything ‘cept you sucking me off.”</p><p>Wesley looked at him, then down at the bulge in his pants. He started shaking his head, but that was only at the idea of bed: he was dropping to his knees and sliding his hand under Gunn’s T-shirt to take hold of the waistband. Wesley didn’t want anything, except a promise for later, in bed, and for Gunn to stop asking questions and give proper attention to the kiss.</p><p>Angelus was there for most of the evening, but very fractured, sounding like he’d just been shaken awake, or was just about to fall asleep. He did fall asleep around eleven, when they were starting their third, deciding round of Yahtzee, but his sleep was fractured too, and when he suddenly went quiet they didn’t sigh with relief, but instead broke off their playful discussion of how Gunn was going to celebrate his victory, and started slowly getting to their feet and agreeing the details of getting Angel ready for the shower.</p><p>Angel had woken up lying on the mattress, facing into the room, but by the time Wesley opened the door Angel was on the floor, turning to hide against the base of the wall. He flinched and shivered when they pulled the mattress out of the way, and when Gunn took his left wrist to hold the padlock steady he went rigid, then started a slow movement away, like he was trying to pour all the rest of his body into a crack, leave his left arm behind.</p><p>After he’d freed the arm Gunn looked at Wesley, expecting him to order Angel to pull his sweater over his head and off his arm, but Wesley was frowning, and then shaking his head.</p><p>“I’m changing my mind about the shower. Let’s wait. See if we can do better than this.”</p><p>Gunn shrugged and nodded. “Couldn’t do worse.” Angel had given a strangled gasp when Wesley started speaking and now he was almost moaning, struggling with his whole body, dragging his head against the carpet, banging it against the wall, and fighting against the last chain harder than they’d seen from Angelus. Gunn moved back out of range, and they stood and looked down at Angel.</p><p>Gunn was thinking about what Doug had said, that all of them in the squad would be losing sleep over Angel. Was there anyone apart from Lilah who could see this and not feel sorry for him? What about Angel himself, back when he was lucid? Would he be purely horrified, or would he think it was justice? The toughest justice, but still what he deserved. And probably it was, but there was a big difference between thinking it was justice and being happy to watch it day after day. Gunn sighed then said, “We gotta have a better chance if we set him free now. I mean, of helpin’ him get lucid.”</p><p>Wesley nodded slowly, raised the bottle of holy water to move in again to cover Gunn, then stepped back as he got another idea. “I’ll bring him in a change of clothes. We should be able to tell something by whether or not he uses them.”</p><p>Wesley placed the clothes on the edge of the mattress, then got in position to reach Angel’s neck and face with the water. Angel was still moaning, still struggling, but with a fraction of that first energy. “Angel?” Wesley’s gentlest voice. “Could you hold your right arm back for Charles? Just for a few moments, so he can set you free.” Again Angel gasped and held still. He curled up slightly, his left hand coming to cover his face, but at the same time he was slowly, slowly moving his right hand back towards Gunn; the chain rattled quietly as it was dragged across his thigh.</p><p>Wesley asked Angel if he was hungry, and if he got any response it was a shudder and a shake of the head, and so Wesley wished him a good night and they left him alone. When they came out of the bathroom he was in his corner, curled tight with both hands pressing his head down onto his knees.</p><p>Depressing, all damn depressing. But then they got their door shut, and Wesley reminded Gunn of his promise and his victory, and then made him forget everything else.</p><p>Lying awake after Wesley had fallen asleep, Gunn realised that the sounds were all traffic, that were was no wave about to break in time with his next breath. They’d been in San Diego just that morning but it felt like a month ago. And that wasn’t... five minutes of Angel wiping out all the good that they’d got from their vacation. No. In fact, those minutes with Angel were the main reason he was wishing Wesley was awake, so he could say, “I’m glad you made us come home. It’s good to be home.” A difficult life and they were right back in it, and they needed to take better care of themselves. But important too, and he was proud, he was proud, to share the responsibility with his strange, skinny, fucked-up Englishman.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Angel hadn’t changed into the clean clothes: instead, he had thrown them or dropped them over near the books, and pushed the mattress across to half-cover both piles. When they got up he was asleep on the floor between the mattress and the far wall, and Gunn was the one who realised when he woke up: about half an hour into their review of Gunn’s case files and their serious discussion of the future of Wyndham-Gunn.</p><p>“He’s no better, is he?”</p><p>Gunn shook his head. “But we have to go in to feed him. Might as well give him the shower, too.”</p><p>Angel didn’t act terrified, no cringing or shaking, more like he was trying to pretend they weren’t there, refusing to look at them.</p><p>“Angel? Could you get undressed? Get ready for a shower? You’ve been in the same clothes for weeks. We need to get you clean.”</p><p>Angel had heard. He looked like he was holding his breath. Did he know he was doing it? Did he know he gasped sometimes, and he panted? Did he know he could hold his breath forever? Ten seconds now. Then twenty. “Please, Angel. Will you help us?” Thirty seconds, and Wesley and Gunn looked at each other in surprise as Angel slowly got to his feet, slowly pulled off his sweater, slowly stepped out of his pants, and then stood against the wall with his hands behind his back.</p><p>As far as Gunn could tell, Angel kept his eyes closed through the whole process: the walking, the chaining, the showering. Maybe he opened his eyes when he reached for the shampoo and the soap, or maybe he found them by smell. He was slumped, withdrawn, quietly hopeless.</p><p>Wesley had vacuumed the room, removed the long chain from the plate where Gunn had left it the night before, moved the mattress to its usual position against the far wall, straightened the books, and put the clothes back on the mattress.</p><p>“Get dressed now, Angel. When you’re dressed I’ll bring you in your food.” Now Angel was definitely shaking his head but he was also pushing himself up to his knees on the mattress, reaching for the clothes – feeling them, smelling them – and then getting dressed even more slowly than he’d got undressed. By the time he got finished he was sitting on the edge of the mattress, the angle of his back blocking out Wesley, the angle of his head blocking out Gunn.</p><p>“You must be hungry, Angel. I think when I bring the blood in, you’ll realise how hungry you are.”</p><p>No, definitely no, and Angel scuttled over to near his corner and pressed himself sideways on to the wall. He was tense now, really uncomfortable, when he’d been too indifferent while he’d been in the shower with Gunn. Gunn remembered Wesley on the bed after Lilah had brought him home, the change that had come over him when he’d looked towards Angel’s room.</p><p>“Angel. You can talk to Wesley now. He can talk to you. I won’t do anything to either of you. I’m sorry I made you think I would. But everything’s different now. Wes’ll tell you. He’ll tell you how it’s worked out.”</p><p>Gunn was expecting surprise, mild distrust, but instead Angel jerked his head up, half-turned towards Gunn, and he was frightened, and he was angry. He stared at Gunn, teeth bared, spat out, “You say ‘Wesley’!” – an order – and then he was purely frightened, and backed away from Gunn so fast that the whole room seemed to shudder when his back thudded up against the wall. He gasped, over and over, still staring at Gunn, then he turned his head with a jerk to look at Wesley; just a second’s glance and he gave a sound like a pleading moan and he was curled again with his arms up protecting his face.</p><p>Gunn backed off to the foot of the mattress. Wesley joined him and they stood and looked at Angel, both breathing heavily. After about a minute Wesley turned and handed the holy-water to Gunn, whispered, “Cover me,” approached Angel to within four feet, and crouched down at his level.</p><p>“Angel. You shouldn’t be frightened of Charles. You should believe him. He’s a good man. He’s a kind, brave man.” A small, gentle smile. “Much better than we deserve. You can believe him when he says that everything’s different.”</p><p>Angel slowly let his arms drop, slowly raised his eyes to Wesley’s, and this time his expression was pain, whereas Gunn had been expecting the fear. Did Angel think Wesley was lying, too, that Gunn had brainwashed him or something? But in that case there’d be anger, wouldn’t there, not just this frozen anguish?</p><p>Very quietly: “Are you frightened of Charles?” A pause, then Angel shook his head, even mouthed a no. “Are you angry with him?” No. “What about me?” No. “Then what’s wrong? Can you tell me what’s wrong?”</p><p>Angel’s body jerked, he opened his mouth, closed it, closed his eyes hard, then suddenly opened them and said in a thin voice, “I don’t want to lose my mind.”</p><p>Gunn gasped and saw Wesley flinch, but it couldn’t be more than a couple of seconds before Wesley swallowed and said, “No. No, of course. But why are you thinking that? What have we done?”</p><p>An abrupt shake of the head. “You don’t do anything. You’re not here. You’re from me. And... And... I’m making you say... I can’t understand what I’m making you say.”</p><p>“Ah.” Wesley glanced up at Gunn. “You think we’re a hallucination.”</p><p>Angel nodded. “I know the dreams. I’ve heard it with the others. This must be how it starts.”</p><p>Wesley started to reach out but Angel shrank back, and Wesley immediately apologised and folded his hand out of the way down by his knee. “Why can’t we be real? Why don’t you take us as real?”</p><p>“You’re gone.”</p><p>“Yes, we had to go away, Angel. I’m sorry we had to leave you, I know it must have been difficult. But we’re back now. That’s why we’re saying things you don’t understand: because we’ve only just got back, we haven’t caught up with everything that’s happened while we’ve been away.”</p><p>Angel was shaking his head. “You’re gone.” A glance up at Gunn then back to Wesley. “You had to go.”</p><p>“And then we had to come back. I couldn’t leave you, could I? I want you to stop thinking about why I might be a hallucination and start thinking about how I could prove to you that I’m real. That I have come back.”</p><p>Gunn wanted to say, “Apart from getting to fuck him through the mattress.” But he couldn’t say that, so he’d just have to trust in that recoil from Wesley’s touch.</p><p>A long, long silence. Angel was thinking, and looking much calmer. Even if Wesley didn’t convince him today, he should be easier the next time.</p><p>Eventually: “You could read with me. Something new. Something I don’t know, that I couldn’t make up.”</p><p>Wesley nodded. “Do you know anything about the history of salt?” And his tone was: “And I’m hoping you don’t, because I’m looking forward to reading about it with you” – which would have been proof enough for Gunn, if he’d been Angel.</p><p>They sat in their usual place by the wall, and Gunn brought his chair in and stood guard, in case Angel decided that Wesley wasn’t real and turned to violence to banish his hallucination. They seemed to forget about him almost immediately. On about the fifth page Angel made his first comment, and soon he made his first joke and looked pleased when Wesley laughed. On the second page of the second chapter, he gave a long sigh and then slid his hand on top of Wesley’s. Wesley turned his head and they looked at one another, just for a second, and then they went back to reading, with Angel’s other hand coming over ready to turn the page. Gunn stood up, picked up his chair, and left as quietly as he could.</p><p>He booted up the computer then put the kettle on and stood waiting for it to boil. Though why boil it now when Wesley’s tea would just go cold? So he didn’t make tea but instead he heated a pint of blood, and he went in and set it down at Angel’s side.</p><p>“Thank you, Charles.”</p><p>“You’re welcome.” So he was “Charles” now, not “the black one”.</p><p>Angel suddenly lost interest in the book halfway through a sentence in Chapter Three, as Wesley told Gunn later, when Angel had fallen asleep again. Angel had closed the book and put it on the floor, and started asking Wesley questions about where they’d sent him, and how they’d let him come back, and what did Gunn mean and how was everything different?</p><p>Wesley had told Angel that he’d been ill, that he’d had to go away until he was well enough to come back. Angel thought they’d been away for years, and he didn’t seem to have any clear memories of Lilah’s squad.</p><p>“Though I couldn’t ask any really direct question, to have him not understand what I was talking about. I don’t want to give him any more reasons to worry about losing his mind.”</p><p>Angel didn’t remember about Wesley’s mistake, wasn’t interested in Wesley’s illness as long as Wesley was better now. He remembered the sex, he remembered that Gunn had found out, and he thought that Gunn had made “them” take Wesley away because guards weren’t ever supposed to have sex with prisoners, and Wesley had felt guilty about that all the time, Wesley had been tormented by it, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself.</p><p>“What’s he think now? If it wasn’t ‘them’ findin’ out, but you bein’ sick? What’s he expect now that you’re back?”</p><p>Wesley shrugged. “That we’ll restrain ourselves because it didn’t make me happy. And he thinks you never told them, so they could still find out. It’s not that I’m back because... they’ve suddenly got a new policy.”</p><p>“So he doesn’t remember me starvin’ him, keepin’ him chained? That threat?”</p><p>“He remembers you being angry. Upset. With every justification. Not the details. He asked a lot about you. About us. If we were together all the time I was ill. He’s glad we were. He’s glad we were able to get over everything.</p><p>Gunn snorted and shook his head. “Y’think he’s gonna be hell, Full-time job t’keep him manageable. Turns out he’s done all the work for us.”</p><p>Wesley nodded. “Him and the vision. Though maybe we deserve a few points for experience.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Wesley wanted to get back to work, or at least he wanted to get back out into the real world, do something useful. He had to figure out how to deal with demons again, how to keep going through his own guilt and shame, and through the anger and the contempt and the pity. Through anything.</p><p>But he couldn’t just appear at Caritas one night with Gunn, like he was taking up where he’d left off. He’d lost that right, and it was for the demons (for the Kekulei, really), to decide when he’d earned it back. If he even could earn it back.</p><p>He’d go to see Swift, explain that he wanted to stop hiding, and ask how he could start to make amends. And he wanted to train again with the duals if they were still willing.</p><p>It would probably be months, though, before he could think about earning money from being back out in the real world. And he was scared of taking on more translation work – assuming Lilah would ever trust him with another manuscript – in case he got sucked in again to that state where it was just him and the language, shut away from all the rest of the world. He’d make himself wear the suit, face a roomful of Kekulei, but he was going to avoid translation for as long as they could afford, because more than anything he was afraid of his own mind.</p><p>He arranged a meeting with Swift for the Friday and to take Lilah out to lunch on Monday, and he called Grouw and asked if Grouw could contact his sister about the training. Grouw was glad to hear from him, said his sister asked about him nearly as often as she asked about Piriti.</p><p>While Wesley was out having his meeting with Swift, Angel had a vision. He was awake when it hit, sitting with his drawing-pad, working on copying something from one of the books. Gunn heard him cry out, heard the thud of his head against the wall, and Gunn ran to unlock the door so he’d be there to catch every word.</p><p>Angel was still in the reverberation phase when Gunn got in the room: pressed back against the wall, looking like he was staring at something he couldn’t believe, frozen with the shock except for his right hand trying to reach out for something across the carpet – maybe still trying to draw, or maybe getting ready to draw.</p><p>Gunn picked up the pad, and had just seen the crayon on top of the mattress when Angel cried out again, louder, tearing, and surged to his feet like someone had hauled him up by the armpits. A few seconds’ pause, then he took a staggering step forward, hunching to the side, then seemed to catch himself and fall back against the wall; and then another step forward and falling back, and again. And all the time he was giving these choked, bitten-off almost-screams. Not words, nothing close to words, but with a change of tone with each gasp for breath, like each scream came from a different person, like there was a mob fighting over who got him next.</p><p>Was that it? He was having more than one vision? And he wouldn’t speak, he wouldn’t draw until one vision beat the others out? God, let it work like that, because... Two sets of clues mixed together, two places where they had to be at the same time. How in hell could they handle that?</p><p>He watched Angel, trying to read the fight, figure out how many were still in, if the end was getting close. Maybe a minute went by and he hadn’t seen any patterns, and then Angel froze in mid-scream, mid-step, was held for one second, two, then crashed sideways to the floor.</p><p>His eyes were open but he was completely still, and he looked very dead. Gunn stepped forward in range of Angel’s feet, knelt down, and reached out slowly to touch his fingertips to Angel’s ankle. He was ready to see the body fall in, sink to dust, but instead he felt the cold skin yield, he felt the bone underneath. Still solid. You couldn’t say “still alive” but... still whole enough to be a home for a demon.</p><p>This must be the pause at the end of the reverberation phase, before he had to speak, had to draw, had to do something about what he’d seen. Longer than usual, deeper, because the vision had been different, was still working through?</p><p>Gunn stood up, stepped back, and waited. Should he call Wesley? No. Not yet. But he should get the tape recorder so Wesley could hear it in Angel’s own words. He put the pad down by Angel’s hand and went to get the recorder from Wesley’s desk.</p><p>Five minutes, and now Gunn couldn’t see Angel suddenly pulling out of this, sitting up desperate and urgent, too many seconds already gone. Whatever the next phase was, that would be different too, and there wasn’t much point in Gunn staying here, when he could just as well watch while he was at the computer.</p><p>He’d watched Angel sleeping a hundred times, thought little of it except to wonder what he was dreaming about Wesley. But this wasn’t sleep. Even in grainy black-and-white on the screen it looked nothing like sleep.</p><p>That body wasn’t resting: it was abandoned. Like something thrown out in the street, a house left with the doors wide open. Felt wrong to be looking at it, like it was... the wreckage from an accident. There was a spare blanket in the bedroom and Gunn found it and spread it over Angel. Not his face because that would be saying that he would never come back. And of course he’d come back. He’d found his way back from hell, he’d learned Wesley’s name again, of course he’d come back from this. Gunn left Angel’s hand uncovered too, where it touched the pad, so if he woke and was looking for the pad, then it’d be there in front of him.</p><p>Wesley saw the open door as soon as he came home, and he was shocked by the empty eyes and had to do the same as Gunn: kneel down and press the skin. No, there would have been no point in Gunn calling. The blanket was a kindness, it was right. More than one vision? Poor Angel. There had been no warning of this in the books. Did other seers do so much better? Or did they do so much worse that there was nothing to tell? They should get the weapons ready, though it had been hours now, they must already be too late.</p><p>Wesley got out all his books on seers, just in case there was something, and he hadn’t known enough before to take it in. Gunn made tea and then asked what had happened with Swift.</p><p>Swift had thought that Wesley might do best to leave town for a while. Six months, maybe. A year. Enough time for other things to happen, push Wesley out of people’s minds. Right now there was still enough of a jolt left to make people feel uncomfortable, especially if you caught them in public. Pretty much what Gunn had said to Anne, when he’d just left his crew: about how they’d need time to cool off, but they’d be ready to move on once they were sure that no one was watching any more.</p><p>But how could they move with Angel? Give up this apartment with the deaf, deaf neighbours, and take their chances in a city that none of them knew? And you had to know your city to have any chance of reading the clues in the visions. No, they couldn’t leave L.A., because so much for them was tied up with Wesley’s sick friend.</p><p>In that case, yes, they had to go for the opposite: do something drastic, and in public. Swift would meet with the Kekulei, ask them what they’d need to see from Wesley to be able to clear his account. Might take weeks before they’d agree, but she thought she knew how to keep things moving, make sure they didn’t dig in and refuse to even see him.</p><p>When they checked on Angel before going to bed, they found that his eyes were closed, and in the morning his hand was turned so his palm was facing upwards. By the time they came back from training he was awake: lying just the same, but making small groaning sounds.</p><p>Angel’s face was tense, held in a frown, eyes pushed half-closed. Wesley knelt down while Gunn covered him. “Angel? Do you know me?” Probably did. Not afraid, not puzzled, not angry. Just tense.</p><p>“Head.” Tight, complaining.</p><p>A pause, then: “Your head hurts?”</p><p>Angel closed his eyes and gave the smallest possible nod. So the tension was pain.</p><p>Wesley put his hand on Angel’s shoulder. “I’ll get you something for that.” Gunn heard Wesley in the bathroom, searching through the bottles in the cabinet, then in the kitchen, running water. As he was kneeling beside Angel again he put the glass down on the carpet, and then he pulled the blanket down to Angel’s waist, placed the pills on the palm of Angel’s left hand and folded Angel’s fingers over them.</p><p>“I know it hurts you to move, but you’ll feel better if you take these. Sit up slowly, and I’ll hand you the water when you’re ready.”</p><p>Angel looked at Wesley, then at the glass. He looked for a few seconds like he was bracing himself to push himself up, but then he gave another of those groans, raised his hand quickly to his mouth, and swallowed the pills with a jerk.</p><p>The pills would take minutes to work, wouldn’t they? (if they even would work on a vampire). But Angel seemed to show the effect after just a few breaths: he closed his eyes, lost about half the tension, and then slowly rolled onto his back. A few more breaths and he gave a long sigh and pushed his right hand across the carpet to find Wesley, and settle around the curve of Wesley’s thigh. “Thank you”? “Stay”? Or just needing to touch him? Wesley laid his hand across Angel’s. “Of course I’ll stay”?</p><p>Gunn looked down at Angel, remembering the screams, the staggering steps, the fall. What would Angel think had happened to put him in this state? Quietly: “I’ll leave you alone.”</p><p>Without looking up, Wesley said, “Are you hungry, Angel? Would you like Charles to bring you some blood?”</p><p>No. Really no. Angel looked nauseous. Gunn was walking towards the door when Angel said, “Ice?” He was looking up at Wesley. “A cloth? Cold?” He lifted Wesley's hand and drew it across to hold it against his own forehead. “Please?”</p><p>“Your head feels too hot? You want me to cool it down?”</p><p>“Please.” And Angel shut his eyes again.</p><p>He did seem to know what he needed, because he managed to fall asleep after about half an hour, and he looked so much better that Gunn took away the blanket. Angel hadn’t spoken to Wesley, except to ask for more of what Wesley was doing, or to ask for less.</p><p>“Anything in the books about visions that just... get lost?”</p><p>Wesley shook his head and shrugged. “Maybe they can’t exist together if there’s more than one. They cancel each other out. With a violent implosion. It must be very rare. If –” A pause. “Do you think it’s sick to want to write an article about it? But then... I can hardly draw attention to the fact that I’m in close contact with a seer. A vampire seer.”</p><p>“Don’t hafta use y’r own name.”</p><p>Wesley laughed. “Then I’d feel as if I was writing for the National Enquirer.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>On Saturday afternoon Wesley drove up to the nest looking for Piriti. It was a miserable day, grey and damp, but the brothers had still come up to work. Piriti hid at first, same as he had from Grouw, but then Solito shouted that it was Wesley and Piriti showed himself almost immediately. He came forward slowly, asking what had happened.</p><p>They talked in the car, while Solito made himself busy in the tunnels. Wesley told Piriti something of what he’d put himself through in the past months, how far the guilt and shame had taken him – including the collapse in the library – and he told him the reasons he’d recently found to try to put himself through something different. He wasn’t there to tell Piriti what he should do, more to remind him that there was more than one possible approach; and to listen, however Piriti needed him to listen.</p><p>Wesley wouldn’t tell Gunn the details of what they’d talked about. He wouldn’t have said anything about what he’d done with Angel, obviously, but he’d probably said something about how difficult he’d been to live with, some of the ways he’d turned away from pleasure. But wasn’t that one of the first things Gunn had noticed about Piriti – that he never gossiped about sex? Whatever Wesley had said, it would be safe with Piriti.</p><p>Piriti called Wesley on Sunday evening, and after a couple of sentences and a few seconds of listening and nodding, Wesley told Gunn that he was going to go down to the car. Gunn looked out of the window every ten minutes or so. One of those times Wesley was looking up at the window, maybe talking about him, and Wesley saw him and smiled slightly and nodded, but not trying to give any hint or promise about how long he would be. He was nearly forty minutes.</p><p>“How’s he doin’?”</p><p>Wesley shrugged and sighed. “He’s been having long imaginary conversations with almost everyone he knows. I think he just wanted to see what it would be like to call me. He didn’t have anything specific. I’m going to keep him informed about what happens with me and the Kekulei.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Wesley and Lilah mostly talked about money: Wesley wanted to know why Lilah’s company was prepared to spend money on Angel, and Lilah wanted to know how long Wesley and Gunn could keep paying their bills if Wesley wasn’t doing any translation work.</p><p>Lilah could make a case for Angel as a research project in the mechanics of prediction, as an investment in goodwill with the Powers, as a curio with value for its potential to attract the attention of new clients, or as a tax-efficient charitable cause - but in fact it was many months since she’d had to make any case at all. Her boss, Holland Manners, had always taken an interest in Angel and had been happy for her to organise the interns. After the evening when he’d relieved young Newton and seen Angel for himself, he’d taken a much more active interest and had soon found Angel a champion in the form of a Senior Partner. So there was certainly sufficient budget to hire the squad for a long weekend every few months.</p><p>Wesley’s answer to Lilah’s question: they could pay their bills for about two months, assuming they were cheap months. He was going to ask around the bookstores, see if he could get a lead on some cataloguing work, or shelving, or anything. Lilah said she was going to start paying him a monthly retainer: she didn’t want him taking on too much cataloguing, she needed him to keep himself available for her translations. The sum she suggested would be enough to cover their rent. Obviously it was charity – they both knew that he’d be lucky to get ten hours a week through the bookstores – and Wesley was just plain glad to have it.</p><p>Wesley put himself in charge of managing the damage to their bank balance. He made a spreadsheet to break down their expenses and decided that food was the only area where they could really cut costs, and then he spent hours checking out grocery stores, produce markets and butchers’ shops to find out what items where cheapest and what were the best days and times to get clearance bargains, and spent many more hours building up a stock of recipes to give Gunn some chance of welcoming, say, liver and surplus cabbage, even for three dinners in a row. Wesley genuinely liked liver (and kidneys, and all the stuff you’d rather throw away) – which was an English thing, he said. Gunn gradually got so he didn’t have to pretend; after a few weeks he didn’t need Wesley to give it a French name, or hide it in a lot of sauce.</p><p>In the end, they weren’t able to make use of the best of Gunn’s experience in living cheap. The crew was already working the best angles for free food, and Wesley wasn’t going to poach on their ground. Wesley wouldn’t consider stealing food or power or anything else. The moral side didn’t bother him, but he just couldn’t afford any problems with the law; it might not be certain that they’d deport him for shoplifting, but he wasn’t ever going to run that risk.</p><p>Wesley sold most of Angel’s books and pawned Angel’s jackets and coats. He raised nearly $400 and he put it aside and called it their “beer money”. It was for renting videos, too, for any luxury that they used for winding down; when Gunn went over to the beach house for the evening, he took $20 from the beer money to pay for his share of the whatever the boys decided to order in. Sometimes Gunn felt like he was in some traditional white-folks marriage, back in the ‘50s, or maybe in the ‘30s, deep in the depression: him bringing in the money, and Wesley using every house-keeping trick he could find to make that money stretch far enough that Gunn could go out drinking with his buddies. But Wesley was so fierce about the savings, so focused. This was his way of keeping control and it wouldn’t be forever, soon he would start earning again, and they’d be able to ease off.</p><p>They agreed early on that they wouldn’t buy each other anything for Christmas. Gunn would roast a chicken and Wesley would make mince-pies, they’d have a full game of that role-playing card game that Gunn had bought for San Diego, and they’d each promise to try a new experience, whenever the other had decided what to ask for. On Christmas Eve, though, Wesley got a call that the Kekulei wanted to see him at a meeting to decide if he was worth the effort that they’d have to put into testing him. “The hearing”, Wesley called it, about his “eligibility for rehabilitation”, and they’d arranged it for two o’clock on the afternoon of Christmas Day. They wouldn’t say exactly how long it would take: maybe two hours, maybe three. Wesley wouldn’t be in a state to appreciate food beforehand, so they’d have their meal in the evening instead and then see what type of game Wesley was in the mood for.</p><p>Gunn wanted to drive Wesley to the meeting and wait for him but Wesley said no, though he did agree to call to ask Gunn to collect him if he felt even slightly shaky afterwards. While Wesley was gone, Gunn cleaned the kitchen and bathroom from top to bottom: scrubbed every surface, rearranged every cupboard; and then played Duke Nukem on the computer while he waited for the call. Wesley wasn’t in danger. Swift would have called him if she’d heard any hint that Wesley might be in danger.</p><p>Wesley drove himself back, and he said he was fine but he wouldn’t really answer any of Gunn’s questions about what had happened. Gunn made tea, and Wesley lay on the couch and read while Gunn started dinner. Later, over the card game, Gunn asked if they couldn’t think of any way of doing what Swift had suggested: get out of town for six months if the Kekulei still wanted Wesley out of sight.</p><p>Wesley shook his head. “I’m fairly sure we won’t need to do that. I think they are going to give me a chance, though it sounded as if they’d need several more meetings amongst themselves to decide what they want me to do.”</p><p>“It went OK, then?”</p><p>A shrug, and Wesley suddenly seemed to lose about four inches in height. Looking down at the coffee table: “Much as I expected, I suppose. The prosecution had done their research.”</p><p>“Prosecution?” Gunn could feel his outrage building by the second. “They made it an actual trial? With you there on your own?”</p><p>“No. No.” Wesley sighed, sounding exhausted. “They just wanted to look at me. The hostile elements were in the minority. But they were noticeably organised.”</p><p>Sharply: “Who were they?” To be prepared.</p><p>Another sigh. “It doesn’t matter. I think they’ll... accept whatever the others decide.”</p><p>Going to bed, Wesley was very subdued, obviously not in the mood for sex. They lay and talked about the game: about fairy-tales and fantasy stories, about magic. Wesley’s mind was on the conversation, but it was also on something else: he acted like he was thinking at half his normal speed. Gunn was right almost to the minute about when the other thing would break the surface. With a sudden change of tone to quietly defeated: “I’ve never understood what women see when they look at me. Apart from the 99% who immediately assume I’m gay.”</p><p>God, where d’you start with that one? “So who’s been lookin’ at you? We’re talkin’ human women, right?”</p><p>A shrug. “I doubt if it makes any difference. I can see them deciding something about me. No matter what I do.”</p><p>“ ‘Do’, like what? What I seen, ‘s you always bein’ super-polite. ‘n’ Anne – or Yan or whoever – decidin’ that y’re very serious ‘n’ very English. Y’know, cool in a weird sort of way. What you want them to decide? Gotta be a cover ‘bout you and me? You’re the straightest skinny white guy that ever lived?”</p><p>Wesley shook his head. “Not now. I don’t care now. I meant...” A deep sigh. “... the way I used to be.”</p><p>When he had two arms? “Y’mean, how y’used to be when Cordy had the hots for you?”</p><p>A brief snort, not really a laugh, then, flatly: “Yes. Exactly.”</p><p>“So she didn’t say what she saw? Wasn’t that kind of crush? Or you thinkin’ what you’d’ve ‘done’ differently?”</p><p>“I think she liked the accent. And the tailoring. While I liked the breasts and the confidence. She was good company but I have to wonder who we were. Who we thought we were. And the same for anyone who – With men, they just want to know how you fuck, what you’ll do. Women... you do have to wonder what they expect, why they’ve fixed on you.”</p><p>Eventually Gunn said, “You care if women like you. You don’t with men.”</p><p>A pause, then Wesley nodded. “I did the way I used to be. Now it’s the other way around. Or – Not with ‘men’. With you.”</p><p>And with Angel. Wesley did care what Angel thought of him. Not about being liked, though. All about being trusted. Being trusted to be useful, back in the beginning. Now… Gunn thought Wesley needed Angel to trust that he would always be there, that he would always put Angel first.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Angel took several days to get over that headache, and the first time they saw him do more than lie quietly – when he woke as Angelus, late that Saturday night – they realised that the strange, cancelled-out vision had caused some new and frightening damage. Angelus could stand up, he could manage more than one word at a time, but he kept on jumping between tracks, like a turntable set on a washing-machine. Or like that vision, but much less violent: speaking, not screaming, and with most jolts a minute or more apart. In all of the tracks he was Angelus, and he had a punishing headache, and he had strong opinions about that headache, but none of the tracks knew about the others, and there were some that repeated two or three times, almost word-for-word. It lasted for about half an hour, exhausting to watch. At the end Angelus acted like the needle had got stuck in the gap between tracks: just stood and juddered for a few seconds and then he slowly folded to the floor. Wesley could hardly sleep that night for imagining the same thing happening to Angel, imagining that this damage might be permanent.</p><p>The next day the headache seemed to have faded to an irritant, like a low sun right in your eyes. Angel was grouchy and groggy and making very little sense. He knew Wesley and there were none of those abrupt jumps between tracks; it was more like three or four tracks had been mixed together, all running at the same time, and the details of Wesley’s response didn’t matter to any of them. Gunn and Wesley only stayed for long enough to feed him, but he stayed awake, muttering and complaining, for nearly two hours.</p><p>Monday was the last day of the headache and he was lucid for most of the day. Wesley got him some migraine-strength Exedrin, and he said he felt as if he’d had the headache forever, and they talked about how drugs worked on vampires.</p><p>On Wednesday evening while they were out training with the crew, Angel had a second “multiple” vision. The sounds on the tape were just like Gunn had remembered the first, including the crash at the end like a felled tree. Angel had fallen face-down under the window, right in the range of the morning sun. They chained his hands and his feet, rolled him over to the mattress, unchained him and covered him with the blanket. When they’d rolled him onto his back, the first move away from the window, Gunn had half-expected to see that he’d been bleeding from his nose. The vision had been bad enough the first time, but knowing the damage it must have caused, hearing the sounds like a mauling... Something had been torn, or crushed under pressure. For an injury like that, there should be some outward sign.</p><p>Again, Angel took three days to recover. The stages in the recovery seemed about the same, though he spent most of his time in hell, barely speaking, and the details of the damage weren’t so obvious. He didn’t speak at all the first time they went in, but then he didn’t need to because Wesley had the Exedrin and the ice-water right there.</p><p>Two of the self-cancelling visions in less than a week. Was that a sign of problems at the source? That the visions were never meant for Angel, should have gone to a three-ton Agodek demon in the Andes – or in another dimension entirely? It couldn’t just be Angel suddenly getting worse, nothing could be that sudden. They’d seen how Angel got worse: through small steps, over weeks. Wesley tried not to build up any hopes on the Powers: that they’d notice soon, that it would serve their purpose to stop the visions going to Angel. Instead, he held to the proof that Angel was able to recover, that his mind did have its own strength.</p><p>On Saturday night, with the pain nearly gone, Angel had a normal vision about Furudal demons preying on homeless people in the Metro Rail tunnels at Union Station. They found two females prowling the tunnels, but Angel’s drawings had shown a male, too. They lay in wait in the lair, but the male must have smelled the blood and they had no advantage of surprise – though the male was also too angry to think of flipping that advantage over against them. A very tough fight, in a confined space. As soon as they were home they stripped off their clothes and threw them in the trash, then took their turns in the shower and patched each other up.</p><p>Angel was still stuck in the vision, of course, muttering about “Union Station” and “getting out of the rain”, tracing lines on the wall, over and over. But now he was also rolling his forehead against the wall and against his knee, and in among the mutterings there were moans of “Hurts. It hurts,” and “Make it stop.” They shared a beer on the couch and wondered about going in with the Exedrin and the ice-water but he wouldn’t know they were there: he wouldn’t take the pills, he wouldn’t lie still for the cloth. Better to get another beer, go to bed, and find out the parts of their bodies that weren’t aching or scraped or bruised.</p><p>The headache from the normal vision lasted all of Sunday, bad enough that even Angelus hadn’t the energy to do more than drag himself up to sitting and complain in a hoarse voice about where they must have found his latest victim, what the young idiot must have been drinking. When he was lucid he called for Wesley, and Gunn didn’t bother standing guard, just helped Wesley with the door. Angel was lucid (and so was Angelus, in his way): making sense, keeping on a single track. The headache looked like an inflammation of the scar-tissue from the mis-sent visions. But that was all, there was no active damage.</p><p>Wesley stayed home from training with the crew in case Angel called for him, and for once Gunn was able to tell them the exact truth: that Wesley’s friend had started having crippling headaches, and nothing seemed to help except Wesley sitting with him. Wesley kept the monitor by the side of the bed, but there was no call during the night and by morning Angel was completely recovered.</p><p>The next vision was a fake one, on Thursday afternoon while Gunn was out working. It was about Doyle; probably not about his death, more likely about one of his visions. The drawings showed Doyle clutching his head in pain, while the words – in an Irish accent – had been about a nest of vampires downtown, and a bar and a tattoo, and something that could never be satisfied. By the time Gunn got home Angel had fallen asleep (or shut down): curled up in his corner, with his arms wrapped tight around his head. Even a fake vision could give him a headache now, though Wesley said there’d been no signs of it for the first half hour. Maybe it took time to build, or maybe the force of a fresh vision drove everything else out. Gunn guessed they would never know.</p><p>Angel was still asleep when Gunn left for the beach-house that evening, but he was awake and vamped-up and very loud when Gunn got back. He had some hard object in there with him and was kicking it and throwing it against the door, and he was snarling about a “twisted little cocktease” and “sick games” and “making you crawl”. Wesley was in the bedroom with a book. He’d had earplugs in and Gunn’s headphones on, but he’d heard Gunn at the door and he’d already put everything aside.</p><p>The thing Angelus was kicking had to be the bowl. Gunn sat on the edge of the bed, laid his arm across Wesley’s knees to stop him getting up, and stared at him hard. After a few seconds Gunn swallowed and shook his head. “Lookin’ at you, I just can’t tell how close it was. You couldn’t’ve... You couldn’t’ve half-known when you went in?”</p><p>Wesley sighed, pulled a face, and dragged his hand back through his hair. “It’s Angel. It has to be: he knows my name. He was saying it when he woke up and I...” Another sigh. “In retrospect I should have realised that he wasn’t calling for me, he was swearing at me or about me. But then he did seem pleased to see me. I don’t know. How close...?” He swallowed hard. “I was just coaxing him to hold out his hand for the pills when he erupted. I’ve been trying not to guess what I might have been doing in his dream. Well... not the details, anyway. If it helps you sleep any better, I don’t think he would have killed me.”</p><p>Gunn closed his eyes tight, clenched his teeth so his jaw-muscles crackled, and dug his fingers deep into the meat of Wesley’s thigh. With his eyes still closed: “Is this how he was before?” A deep breath, and then he was looking at Wesley. “I mean, the time when you covered it up?”</p><p>Wesley looked away for a few seconds, then put his hand over Gunn’s. “The eruption was – But he was angry in a different way. With more hope. None of this vitriolic judgement.”</p><p>Slowly: “We’ve all been through a lot since then. He – Jeez, there’s a million things he could dream.” Wesley just nodded. “How're you gonna sleep?”</p><p>Wesley took hold of Gunn’s jacket near the collar, and started to tug it off his arm. “Better if you...” A smile. “... throw me across the bed right now and tear my clothes off and leave me distinctly sore.”</p><p>“Wes, I -” Gunn put his hands on Wesley’s shoulder and waist, very lightly, to steady, not control. “Listening to him, thinking about – It doesn’t take me like that. More the opposite. I know you got ways of… usin’ the bad stuff, turnin’ it around but – But I can’t.”</p><p>Wesley was shaking his head. “It’s not that it takes me like that, either. I’d have to act my part at first, we both would until we managed to forget about him. But forceful sex is good, when it’s with a good man. And I want to relearn that immediately, before I leave this room and have to look at him again.”</p><p>Forceful. Gunn liked that: for the excitement, the newness, and the trust. He changed his grip and pulled Wesley into a kiss – slow and deep, at first, like they were looking for something in each other. A promise, maybe, that they would be able to forget about Angel? When they were both gasping and Wesley’s fingers were busy at the fastening of Gunn’s pants, Gunn pulled back enough to say, “So what’s my motivation? You said I’d be playing a part.”</p><p>A slight pause, then Wesley laughed. “Um... you’re a mattress salesman. You get very good commission. I’ve had disappointments before with this design of spring. So you insist I take the time for a thorough test.”</p><p>Gunn just managed to keep a straight face. He knelt up with one foot on the ground and lifted Wesley a few inches off the bed. “Which would start with the throwing?”</p><p>“Yes. Oh, yes.” Wes was so eager, not playing any part at all. Gunn kept on having to prompt him to show some resistance – which he did mostly by acting like Wesley was already fighting back hard – because he did want his chance to be forceful. He stayed with that ridiculous character as long as he possibly could, running it as a commentary in his own head long after Wesley had stopped forming words, had stopped showing any sign of hearing; not because the idea made him hot, but the opposite: because the silly joke gave him a distraction, a way to stay cool, so he could keep those sounds coming from Wesley’s throat for five more breaths, ten more.</p><p>Angel had been trying not to listen. Or his headache had taken over. Or something. Wesley didn’t look up at the screen when they went out to use the bathroom and get a beer, but Gunn did. Angel was over at the far wall, kneeling with his forehead against the wall and his forearms pressed flat on either side. You could see that as Angel covering his ears, or banging his head against the wall, or trying to claw his way through it. Or even praying. But desperate to be somewhere else. Yeah, desperate.</p><p>For a second Gunn thought, “You were better off when you were always in hell.” But that wasn’t true. Angel hadn’t been better off then, just Gunn, just Gunn’s imagination. Because Gunn’s imagination couldn’t stretch as far away as Angel’s hell, it couldn’t put flesh on the torments in Angel’s memory. But Angel having to listen to them, with all the hundreds of things he felt and thought about Wesley… Gunn’s imagination understood from the inside. Gunn pitched his voice low when they got back to bed, just above a whisper, and Wesley followed without making any comment.</p><p>Angel woke them up several times during the night: as Angelus, and with nightmares. He was lying on the mattress when they got up, looked deep asleep. Their first sign that he was awake came just after they’d settled to breakfast: a shout breaking across their conversation about that evening’s training with the duals. “I’m hungry! Wesley!” An impatient order. He was on his feet, with his arms folded; they hadn’t heard him move.</p><p>Wesley frowned hard, dragged the back of his hand across his lower lip, shouted back, “Yes, alright,” muttered, “Some people think it’s good form to say please,” then got up and went to open the fridge.</p><p>Angel wouldn’t look at them. He’d aimed his order straight at the door, but when Gunn slid the bolts he turned sharply away. When he held his right hand out for the beaker, it was almost behind his back.</p><p>“You can put your hand down, Angel, I’m not going to give this straight to you, I don’t trust your mood. Go and kneel in the far corner on the other side of the mattress. Facing the wall.”</p><p>The hand closed, rose inch by inch as a fist while Angel breathed tight and harsh and then he suddenly shook himself, gave a rasping sigh, and strode over to the corner. Every movement, every line saying, “Let’s get this over with.” Plus a subtext of: “Asshole!”</p><p>Wesley put the beaker on the floor about in the middle of the room. Angel drank the blood standing up, still turned away from them. When he was finished he threw the beaker towards them: not wanting to hit them, probably, just a flick of the wrist to get rid of the thing; and then he wandered slowly back to the far wall.</p><p>Wesley collected the beaker, the bowl and the cloth and placed them just outside the door. Three steps back into the room, then: “Is there something we need to talk about, Angel?” Angel’s whole back gave a violent shudder, then he hunched up. “You’re obviously very angry with me, but I don’t really understand why. This seems very sudden.” No response, nothing. Wesley looked at Gunn and shrugged. “Well... if you’re too angry to be able to talk about it, maybe you could write about it on your pad. Then you wouldn’t have to have me in here, you could slide the paper under the door.” Still no response, not even a jerk of the head to show he was thinking about where he’d find the pad. Gunn’s turn to shrug, and they left.</p><p>After a few minutes Angel moved to do his hunching on the mattress, and then after about half an hour he suddenly went over to take the pad, sat against the wall scrawling furiously – covering one, two, three pages – then gave one of his snarls, and threw the pad across the room. He sprang to his knees, lightning-fast, grabbed one of the books and destroyed it in five efficient movements. The same with the other book, and then he went back to the mattress.</p><p>They weren’t sure when he fell asleep, but just past midday he woke up in hell, and they decided it was safe to go in and get the pad. Page One had a drawing of Gunn angry, probably the way he’d looked when he’d first found out about them, when he’d written that threat about the gag. Yeah, very probably since the drawing had “VINDICTIVE” and “PETTY” and “SPITEFUL” slashed across it. Looked like Wes had got it wrong when he’d said that Angel didn’t remember the threat.</p><p>Page Two was Wesley lying on Angel’s mattress, naked except for the padding across his shoulder, looking relaxed, looking welcoming. But not hard: the cock was drawn clear, and it was lying soft on the curve of his thigh. The words were written along the margins, and much more lightly than with the picture of Gunn: “If it’s not because of him and you’re a coward, then it’s because you’re cruel. I try to believe you’re a coward,” and “You made me think I knew.”</p><p>Page Three had just words. “I don’t deserve that much.” – “It’s too hard for just wanting.” – “I KNOW it was wrong for him, I KNOW we won’t, you think I didn’t have time to learn?” – “You KNOW what you’re doing.” – “You MADE it like that. You won’t accept, so you’re making me pay.”</p><p>Gunn tore the pages out of the pad, spread them out on the table, and stood scratching his eyebrow and shaking his head. “Wha’d’you think? He’s having a flashback to when I was keepin’ him chained?”</p><p>Wesley was still staring at the pages like he’d never known that Angel could draw. After a few seconds: “Charles. I swear to you he’s never seen me like that. It’s never been like that.”</p><p>Gunn shrugged and shook his head. “I wasn’t even thinkin’ that. So what about the flashback idea?”</p><p>A long sigh. “I don’t know. Obviously he feels betrayed in some way to do with sex. I suppose there was a lot he felt at the time that he didn’t show me. And now I’ve done something to trigger it. But – I’ve touched his hand almost every day since we came back. I thought it helped.”</p><p>Gunn nodded. “Sure looked that way.” Angel touched Wesley every day, too, and not for Wesley’s practical reasons – the pills, the blood, the cloth – but just because he wanted to. “How’s he been talkin’ about it since we got back? Sex, I mean.”</p><p>Wesley put his hand on the third page and flicked the edge with his thumb, over and over. “Um...” He swallowed. “In a positive way. Not as a problem.”</p><p>“He still want you?”</p><p>A very brief nod.</p><p>“He gettin’ you? ‘n’ I know it ain’t my business but he’s kinda makin’ it a... y’know, a work-safety issue.”</p><p>Wesley screwed his face up, dragged his hand down over it, then met Gunn’s eyes, obviously struggling every second not to look away. “He’s getting something. Not much but enough to keep him content. Or so I thought. It seemed a stable arrangement.”</p><p>“How often?”</p><p>“Three or four times since we got back. With the headaches... the last time was nearly a week ago.”</p><p>“Could be he thinks it was longer? You cut him off?”</p><p>“Maybe. I – But the way he reacted last night. And now calling you vindictive. Seeming more angry with you.” Wesley shook his head. “Maybe it’s an effect of the damage from the new visions. Not exactly a flashback but a collage. We shouldn’t try to guess, our minds don’t work like that.”</p><p>Gunn thought that over. “So what d’we do? Chain him up so we don’t need the two of us just to feed him? ‘n’ hope the next vision’ll damage him back to somethin’ we’re used to?” Yeah, but what were they used to? Body-length burns in the middle of the night. Hard-ons in the showers, with confident invitations to group sex. Like Wesley had said, you could think you were ready but he kept on surprising you.</p><p>But there were always reasons, when he was in a state to explain. Some were a monster’s reasons (“I’d break his neck.”), some were a crazy man’s, but the rest you could understand. And he usually understood your reasons (“He can’t sleep in here, you’re too dangerous.”) – once you’d come up with a version that fitted in with what he needed to believe about his place in hell.</p><p>Wesley was looking up at the screen, frowning hard. Finally, with a sigh: “For now, I’d rather risk letting him go hungry than keep him chained up. We know the chains would give him more material for his collage. Keeping him hungry is... I think there’s more room for manoeuvre.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Angel wasn’t lucid for the rest of Friday or any of Saturday, and they fed him when he seemed deepest in hell. At 6:12 on Sunday morning he had another mis-sent vision – his third. Gunn thought it was shorter than the others, not as violent, but it could be he’d gotten used to them already. They got Angel onto the mattress, covered him with the blanket, and went back to bed.</p><p>Angel started groaning in pain at 4:38 in the afternoon, definitely quicker to come round than after the last mis-sent vision, by at least two hours. He was not pleased to see them, shared the same suspicious glare between both of them while Gunn was standing guard on Wesley placing the bowl by the side of the mattress then pulling away the blanket. When Wesley had taken himself out of the way, Gunn stepped forward to put the pills next to Angel’s hand. “I’ll leave these here, for you to take when you’re ready.” The glare got worse as he was bending down, and he was already poised to jump back when Angel let out a roar of outrage and flipped himself to his feet to throw himself at Gunn. Before they had even started sliding the bolts, Gunn knew that Angel had stopped his charge, but it wasn’t until he stepped back to look at the screen that he could make sense of the changed sounds.</p><p>Angel was retching, sprawled on the floor with his hands clutching his head on all sides, like he was trying to keep it still while his body was convulsing. Or just like he was trying to hold his skull together, stop it cracking open. Or stop it melting. His moans were thin with disbelief, a helpless pleading.</p><p>“There’s gotta be somethin’ we can do.” Gunn was whispering, he didn’t know why. “Get him a doctor, get a message to the Powers. This isn’t right.”</p><p>Wesley was shaking his head. “We tried that when we first realised there was damage. The Powers... they won’t accept any approach from our kind. There’s no doctor who can make a difference to a seer. To any kind of seer.”</p><p>“This isn’t...” Gunn was getting a headache himself just from watching. He rubbed his hand hard over his face then squeezed the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t what he signed up for. If he could’ve seen himself now, he’d’ve said a big ‘yes’ back when you offered him a way out.”</p><p>Wesley sighed and swallowed. “We don’t know that, Charles. And we can’t ask him now, because he doesn’t know the full situation. I’m not ruling out... But it’s too early even to discuss this.” Wesley turned away, went over to the bookshelf on the far side of his desk, and made like there was nothing else in his mind except looking for that one book.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Wes.” Gunn had needed half a minute to decide to follow him. But he’d been right and Wesley’s problem wasn’t with him: Wesley turned immediately under the hand on his shoulder and held himself against Gunn.</p><p>Against Gunn’s neck: “I don’t know how many times I’ve thought, ‘It’s terrible that he’s immortal. It’s terrible.’ “</p><p>“Yeah, it is.” And they stayed like that in silence as the sounds from Angel’s room got gradually slower and more and more exhausted. The last sound was his hand sliding off his head to land heavily on the floor. He didn’t move in the time before they left for training with the crew, but while they were gone he managed to crawl backwards the four feet or so to the mattress, and he was lying on his back looking at least three fourths dead.</p><p>Gunn felt like a bath instead of the usual shower after training, and he lay and thought about Wesley’s “collage” idea and why he didn’t buy it. OK, maybe it was a mess of things stuck together, more than they’d seen from him before, but it wasn’t random, not the way Wes had decided when he’d said they shouldn’t bother to guess. Angel had been blazingly angry with Gunn, had held onto that even through a vision, and the same with the trigger of touching his hand. Wesley and sex... Feeling confused and betrayed about Wesley and sex, when he’d seemed “content” the day before (no, the week before).</p><p>Maybe Angel hid a lot from Wesley. Gunn could understand that. Angel saying to Gunn, “Don’t leave him.” Yeah, he’d had ideas of his own then about what was going on with Wesley. And when he’d needed to tell them, he’d told Gunn.</p><p>He’d hide things from Wesley because Wesley mattered to him, he had too much to lose there. And he might tell the truth to Gunn for the opposite reasons – might at any time but especially now when he was so angry.</p><p>If Gunn could get him on his own, manage to keep away from all of Angel’s triggers, and convince Angel that he did want to understand... Or at least: make it more satisfying for Angel to keep on talking to him than to make a leap for his throat. No, he wasn’t going to discuss this with Wesley. But he did want to get more prepared.</p><p>“Have you been sucking him off?” Just after they’d settled in bed. Totally matter-of-fact.</p><p>Wesley gave a start of surprise but recovered quickly, like he’d known to expect this. “No. I’ve been jerking him off. That’s as far as I’d ever go. I decided that before... I went in the first time.”</p><p>“He ask for more?”</p><p>Wesley shook his head. “Not after I’d explained that anything else would require too much involvement on my part. He’s not my lover. I’m glad to offer contact. Guaranteed release. But he mustn’t ask for anything that he knows is only for you.”</p><p>“So you just jerk each other off?”</p><p>Another shake. “He’s not allowed to see me naked. He’s not allowed to touch me like that. Maybe I’m his lover but it’s essential that he knows that he isn’t mine.”</p><p>Gunn remembered Wesley in the laundry room, the morning after that vision of the vamps at the UCLA dorm – (“I’d be happy to suck you off. But I couldn’t do it as a lover.”) – and he closed his eyes tight for two long, deep breaths. “Wes.” A sigh. “That would break my heart.”</p><p>“You think it’s cruel?”</p><p>Gunn gave a shrug; and then nodded several times.</p><p>Wesley looked thoughtful. “He really doesn’t - didn’t - seem to think so. There was… affection but with limits in the manner of expressing it.”</p><p>“You kiss?” Wesley nodded. “You roll around on the mattress?” Another nod. “You get him all-the-way undressed?”</p><p>A shrug. “It depends on his mood.”</p><p>Gunn frowned. “It’s gotta turn you on.”</p><p>“Yes, but... he’s not allowed to see me come. To do anything to try to make me. I only want that with you. I don’t try to pretend I’m indifferent to him. Well, I couldn’t. But you’re the one I’m involved with.”</p><p>Gunn rolled over onto his side, slid his hand onto Wesley’s stomach, and teased his two lowest fingers further and further along the line of hairs down to the groin. “Involved to the hilt.” They smiled at one another, and Wesley stroked the inside of Gunn’s arm with the back of his fingers.</p><p>“But it’s cruel?”</p><p>“No, I... I don’t know now. Cruel if you were doing it to Matt or someone. If he was really stuck on you. ‘cos it’d be keepin’ him stuck on you when he should’ve given up in a week and gone lookin’ for someone available. But for Angel it’s this or nothin’ and – yeah, like you said, sounds like a stable arrangement. Guess he has fantasies, but – He’s never acted, has he, like he wanted all of you?”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>On Monday, Wesley got a call from one of the bookstores, asking if he could go to Santa Barbara the next day to evaluate the library for an estate that was being sold. The bookstore guy had a family emergency, and he trusted Wesley’s eye. Forty bucks for the trip, plus expenses.</p><p>Wesley left at ten on Tuesday morning, when Angel had been lucid for about half an hour. The pain seemed to be gone, but Angel was still angry with them; he wouldn’t look at them or speak to them, but he was matter-of-fact about following Wesley’s instructions for keeping his distance at feeding time, and he didn’t throw the empty beaker at them but put it back on the carpet and then went to kneel by the wall.</p><p>Gunn waited twenty minutes after Wesley left – enough time for Wesley to come back for anything he’d forgotten – and then he knocked on Angel’s door. “Angel, it’s Charles. I need to talk to you about what Wesley and I have done to make you so angry with us.” Angel was over in his corner, but Gunn could see him shaking his head. Not yelling at Gunn to go fuck himself, though, so a good start. Gunn opened the door.</p><p>“I know you don’t want to talk to me, but I’m here ‘cos I want things to get better. Man, what you got to lose by givin’ me some time?” Angel turned his head even further to the wall. Gunn walked slowly to the mid-point, where they put the beaker, and dropped down on one knee to be at Angel’s level.</p><p>“Guess you’ll think I’m lyin’ when I say I don’t know what I’ve done. Been told I’m bad for holdin’ grudges, but just, you know, ‘kinda bitter’. You goin’ ‘s far as ‘vindictive’... That’s a shock, man. ‘specially now when – Yeah, I’ve got weird in the past ‘bout you ‘n’ Wesley, got jealous ‘n’ done some things I shouldn’t. But I’m totally over that now. It’s good that you guys’re close. So I – You’re gonna have to tell me, what I’m doin’ that makes you say ‘vindictive’. ‘cos from what I’m feelin’, I ain’t got nothin’ to guess on.”</p><p>Angel hadn’t shown any reaction, except a few times to shift his head very slightly against the wall. A long, long pause, then he slowly turned his head to look at Gunn – to stare at him. His expression was suspicious and hostile, but with just enough shifts to give hope that there was puzzlement in there, some new questions about Gunn.</p><p>After maybe half a minute: “The headaches are bad.”</p><p>“Man! Understatement? Never heard of anything like that. God, I wish I knew something to do to help. Really help.”</p><p>Open puzzlement. Surprise. Doubt. Then, very quietly: “Trust me. Let me go.”</p><p>Gunn’s turn to be surprised. “Let you go where, Angel? You think there’s a place they can treat you?”</p><p>Angel shook his head and raised his hand to press his fingertips up past his hairline. Impatient: “Take this off me. Make them stop.”</p><p>Gunn reran the last few exchanges in his mind, then blinked hard and jabbed his finger onto his breastbone. “You think I’ve got the power to make your headaches stop? Angel, I –”</p><p>“You made them permanent?” Spat out.</p><p>They stared at one another, very different shades of disbelief.</p><p>“You think I laid them on you. In revenge or punishment or something. Because I don’t trust you?”</p><p>Angel nodded, very definite, the one who couldn’t be fooled. “It was the only way you’d agree to come back. After he got better. If it wouldn’t happen again because I’d never dare – I wouldn’t even think about...” He closed his eyes tight and swallowed, then sighed and looked at Gunn again. “And I know he’s yours but the headaches are too much. It’s not justice.” A whisper, dreading the answer: “Did you make them permanent?”</p><p>“Oh, Angel.” Gunn dragged his hand over his head. “You got it all wrong. I can see why but – You got it all wrong. I do, I do wish to god I knew where the headaches came from. Then I’d know where to start in gettin’ you free. But I don’t. I’m sorry. And, yeah, there’s some stuff between you two I don’t want to happen again, because it was a large part of how he got so sick. But –” A pause. “I guess I need to know what the headaches were supposed to stop you from thinking about. The way you’d figured it. Just about fuckin’ him hard enough to leave bruises? Or about normal things like kissin’ him ‘n’ havin’ him touch you?”</p><p>Angel closed his eyes and shook his head. “Anything. Wanting anything would.... The strongest thing I should ever be thinking about him was that he was yours. Wanting anything would mean that I hadn’t managed to respect… I had to respect – You.”</p><p>“Angel, I –” A long sigh. “There’s some things I gotta respect too. Had to learn that I gotta respect. You said he’s mine. He’s yours too, in a different way. Some ways, lots of ways, you’re more important to him than me. We’re here – him ‘n’ me – because he’s totally committed to taking care of you. If I turned around and said to him, ‘OK. I’ve had enough. I wanna get outta here ‘n’ live a normal life... Well, I know for a fact he wouldn’t leave you. He’d choose you. Every time.” A shrug. “I like the share we’ve got of him now. I wouldn’t change it.”</p><p>More staring. Eventually: “You’re telling the truth.” Shaking his head. “You never knew about the headaches. So he wasn’t trying to make me... It meant the same, it meant something good.” Pure relief.</p><p>“Uh – No, we didn’t know what you thought about the headaches. What was causin’ them. I guess you were angry with Wesley if you thought he was letting me do that to you?” Either a coward, or cruel, that’s what Angel had said.</p><p>Angel sighed. “He was still touching me. Being close. I thought he wanted to see the power he had over me. Or that you were making him. I thought I’d never known him.”</p><p>They’d been so busy with their own theories about the visions, they never wondered if Angel had a theory of his own – when all Angel knew was the headaches had started just after they got back, and that he’d seen Gunn plenty angry in the weeks before they left.</p><p>Gunn told Angel that Wesley might not be back that day, but he would definitely get to see him the next day. He offered to get Angel something to read, they cleared up the mess from the last books, and then Gunn took some of the beer money, went to Barnes and Noble, and bought another art book and another copy of the salt book.</p><p>Angel spent the next few hours sitting in his reading-place, sometimes reading, sometimes drawing, sometimes drifting off to stare across at nothing. When Wesley got home around five, Angel was asleep on the mattress having a good dream about Wesley and sex. Wesley looked surprised, said, “Now there’s a flashback,” and Gunn told him what had really been happening with Angel.</p><p>Wesley was so impressed with Gunn, so relieved, so grateful. Gunn didn’t give it to Wesley word-for-word, nothing about how he knew Angel was more important to Wesley. He just said he’d managed to convince Angel that he’d got over being jealous, he knew Angel wasn’t disrespecting him. They tore up Angel’s angry drawings, then went to roll around on their own mattress.</p><p>Angel woke up while Wesley was starting the preparations for dinner, and he heard Wesley’s voice and called for him, very confident, very eager.</p><p>“I’ll be with you in a minute, Angel.” Wesley was turning off the cooker and putting the liver and everything back in the fridge. Gunn got his jacket and cellphone, kissed Wesley a quick goodbye then went down to his truck; they’d already talked this through: how Gunn didn’t want to see or hear any of it, how he’d go for a drive and Wesley would call him when it was over.</p><p>He went to Manhattan Beach, got a coffee, and sat in the truck and looked at the ocean. Last time he was here was a month ago, when Angel was chained up and Wesley wasn’t talking to him. God, how did he even recognise himself?</p><p>He was OK with what they were doing, he really was. Yeah, it gave him a jolt; the idea of seeing them kiss sent a spike slamming through his heart and his gut. But then the idea of Angel trusting Wesley again, Wesley knowing he could give Angel that affection and that release, and not have to worry about hiding it from Gunn... A warm glow, that spread further than the jolt, and lasted much longer.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>The Kekulei demons had reached a decision: there was something Wesley could do to atone, and that was to redecorate the church and their other community spaces, from top to bottom. They’d supply all of the equipment and the materials, they’d arrange any repairs or any structural work that needed to be fitted around the redecoration; but they expected him to work to a very high standard, and he was going to have to work around their schedule, because the buildings were staying in use and the most they’d do would be to close off one room over a weekend if the fumes from the paint were going to be too bad. And, no, Gunn was not allowed to help, Wesley had to do everything himself.</p><p>They informed Wesley of the decision on the 30<sup>th</sup> of December, he spent two hours with them on the 2<sup>nd</sup> of January looking over all of the rooms and discussing the schedule, and he started the work the next day. The first room on his list was used throughout the day, up to ten in the evening. He got there at a quarter to ten. The last people in the room helped him move the furniture, as agreed, and by eleven the caretaker had locked up, leaving him on his own. They’d given him a key to the back door so he was able to let himself out when he got finished just after four – with one coat of paint applied to the third-largest ceiling, and all of the equipment cleared away so the first group in would only have to move the furniture back. Gunn was woken by the sound of Wesley running a bath, and he got up and helped Wesley scrub the flecks of white paint out of his hair, off his glasses, and especially off his hand and arm. He was exhausted, and he also had a mass of bruises all down his right side. Most were from pushing the ladder around, but he admitted that the worst were from falling off the ladder, when he’d misjudged and overbalanced.</p><p>“It took me a while to accept how small the steps are that I have to take, not having that spare arm for support. I daren’t really move more than about two feet at a time on either side. Which meant I had to move the ladder about six hundred times. And then go up and down it six hundred times – which was how I did most of the falling, before I got truly pathetically cautious. Fortunately the ceilings are relatively low. And the Kekulei aren’t trying to set any deadline.”</p><p>“The ceilings still sound high enough to be fucking dangerous! What’re they thinkin’? I mean, that’s what I’d call vindictive.”</p><p>Wesley was shaking his head. “No, it was good of them to choose something that they actually want done, that they’ll value and have with them for a long time. I thought they’d probably come up with some make-work, that wouldn’t benefit anyone and that they didn’t care about. Where the only point was to take up my time and have me on show. They didn’t choose this because it would be difficult for me, they chose it because they agreed that they wanted it. They know I’ll need help with some things. They’ve organised themselves to give it when I ask. And I found my rhythm eventually. The last two hours were much easier.”</p><p>The next night Wesley went to the church straight from training with the duals, and he was home by three. Before he could start the walls, he needed someone to mask off the edge of the ceiling for him; it was more convenient for the Kekulei to leave that until Sunday afternoon, which meant that Wesley had a night off.</p><p>Piriti had called Wesley several times checking for news about the Kekulei, but he hadn’t called since they made their decision so Wesley dropped by the nest on Saturday afternoon. When Piriti heard about the delay with masking the ceiling, he immediately said that he could do that, and Wesley agreed to ask the Kekulei if they could include Piriti in the rehabilitation program – just for the tasks that needed two arms, he’d say, not to take any of the work from Wesley that he could do himself.</p><p>The question of Piriti had to go to a council, but they had their answer by Tuesday and the answer was yes. They knew about Piriti, that he’d been Barney’s route to Wesley, so, yes, it was appropriate. But Wesley had to take all responsibility for him, they didn’t want to have to organise him too. Wesley and Piriti arranged that Piriti would get himself a new pager, and that Wesley would collect him from home each time, and take him back when he’d done his part.</p><p>Wesley’s schedule was very irregular, depending on the day’s bookings for his current room, and on whether or not Piriti was going to be able to sneak out of the house. The Kekulei were good about informing him of last-minute changes – and Piriti probably did as well as he could. Wesley could have made his life a lot easier if he’d decided just to start at eleven each night, but instead he usually started as early as possible, to increase the number of waking-hours he spent with Gunn.</p><p>The earlier he started, the more Kekulei demons would be in the building while he was working. If there were more than ten, he said, then he knew to expect some kind of display of hostility; he didn’t count what they said in their own language, because he was sure those people thought he couldn’t understand a word. There was never any real threat – they knew he was under strong protection – but they were determined to make their position clear. Wesley would agree with them (he made a stock of four or five standard replies), and then explain that he had to get back to work.</p><p>Otherwise nobody talked to him, not really, nothing beyond the organisation needed for his work. And he said that was how it should be, but Gunn could see him sliding back toward his “non-person” place, the place where the tape had put him, where he drank blood and could only watch a movie if there weren’t any words. He was spending more and more time in his thrift-shop clothes (all good painting clothes, he said), he was starting to give himself breaks from shaving, and he was talking in his sleep again, those long conversations that Gunn guessed were still in Dirkou. Gunn didn’t hassle him – he was in a tough situation, course it was gonna have an effect on him – but tried to give him good things to keep him anchored in the real world: making their shared evenings into “dates”, with Gunn doing the cooking and Wesley encouraged into his suit; and buying him a radio to keep him company during the long, boring hours of painting. This wouldn’t last forever. Months, with Wesley having to work so careful and slow, but not forever.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>A week or so after Wesley had started the painting, Gunn got a call from Grouw. “Have you... Did you know there’s this picture of Wesley being passed around?”</p><p>Gunn’s mind immediately went to Angel’s drawing of Wesley on the mattress, but they’d torn that up, and who could have got to it, anyway? “What picture?”</p><p>“Um... Be best if you come down here when I get off work. I got a copy I can show you.”</p><p>“It’s bad?”</p><p>“It’s not good. Gonna need some clever handling. I’ve been telling people it has to be a joke but – Really hoping there’s nothing more out there.”</p><p>The picture was a black-and-white glossy, like a publicity shot. The photo showed Wesley in motorbike leathers, all black, helmet in his left hand, resting on the saddle of the bike, crossbow in his right, down by his thigh. Background looked like an alley on the outskirts of some desert town. There wasn’t stubble as Gunn had come to know it, but Wesley was definitely going all-out for the look of “on the road for days solid, seen things you couldn’t ever imagine”. A transparent piece of posing, best kept between you and your bedroom mirror, but kind of understandable for a glasses-wearing English geek, all fired up about his first-ever road-trip, Hot, but like a stranger: you wouldn’t want him to talk, you’d never guess he had those half-smiles. You’d do it standing in some doorway. He’d pull your pants down quickly with those two hands, and he’d hold you with them, tight, and that wouldn’t mean anything, not to him, not to you.</p><p>But the picture wasn’t the problem. The picture was easy enough to pass off as a joke, or just to shrug off as proof that Wesley had watched the same movies as every other kid on the block. The problem was the words in the space beneath the picture. “Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. Rogue Demon Hunter.” With a cellphone number.</p><p>It was one thing to have macho fantasies. It was another thing to act them out, go vigilante. Yeah, everyone knew that Wesley had killed demons but that was knowing him as earnest, honourable, one-armed Wesley, who couldn’t tell any kind of lie, who killed only to protect, only when he had to. This Wesley in the picture, he killed for kicks, needed it for his fantasy, and you’d never get the truth for him about where he’d found the demon, what the demon had been doing.</p><p>“Oh, fuck!” Gunn dropped the photo on the seat and slammed the heel of his hand hard against his forehead.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“How long’s it been around?”</p><p>“Couple of days, I think. There’s hundreds of copies. What was he thinking?”</p><p>Gunn shook his head, over and over. “Long time ago. ‘nother lifetime, probably seems. Maybe it was a joke. Where’d it come from?”</p><p>A shrug. “The Kekulei, I guess. Barney, even? You’d better deal with this quick. I’d like to hear something from him, myself.”</p><p>Gunn nodded. “I’ll get on it. Thanks.” A pause. “You done a lot for us. Got into a lot for us. Guess you sometimes gotta wonder why.”</p><p>Grouw frowned, and took a long time to reply. “You’re my only friend where I never know what’s gonna happen next. Nine times out of ten that’s a good thing. Well. Eight times, maybe.”</p><p>Wesley was at the church, should be done in another hour. Gunn went home and started the dough and the sauce for the pizza. He’d put the photo face-down on the coffee-table, and he wasn’t going to look at it again until he had to, which would be as soon as Wesley got back.</p><p>Wesley didn’t look half as surprised as Gunn expected. Horrified and cringing with embarrassment, but not surprised.</p><p>“You knew this was out there?”</p><p>Wesley nodded. “At the hearing on Christmas Day. The prosecution presented it. They’d done some very thorough research.”</p><p>“So what’s the story? Wha’d’you tell them at the hearing? There’s a good explanation, right?”</p><p>Deep breath in, then gusted out. “No. Not really. This was taken about three weeks before I got to L.A. I was fired as a Watcher about three months before that. I couldn’t go home. I made a very clumsy attempt at reinventing myself. At not caring. When I picked up the Kungai’s trail, I thought -” He closed his eyes and swallowed. “Barney’s trail. Of course. I thought I should reward myself by making it official. So people could know who – The only mitigation I can offer is that I was completely ineffectual. I did no good, but also no harm. Of course, I don’t know how long that would have lasted if the Kungai hadn’t ruled out the motorbike for me as a central prop.”</p><p>Gunn looked at the photo for a long time, then back at Wesley. “That what you told the hearing?”</p><p>Wesley nodded. “The prosecution couldn’t offer any evidence of harm. I think they were hoping that I’d be shocked into revealing my true character. Like the villain in a fairy-tale.”</p><p>Slowly: “It was demons that Barney was hurting. You were trying to stop him.” He should have remembered that immediately, but that picture had packed too much of a punch. “Who’s gonna have a problem with that kind of demon-hunting?”</p><p>“The defence did make that point. But I know the man in that picture better than they do. He was truly a shell. There shouldn’t be any excuses made for him.”</p><p>Gunn reached out, ripped the photo across, and again, and dropped the pieces out of sight behind the arm of the couch. “OK, he’s gone. But we need to say something about him. Someone’s put hundreds of copies out there. Gotta be people workin’ away right now, makin’ up each others minds. We need to get in ‘n’ unmake ‘em.”</p><p>“What do you suggest?”</p><p>Gunn shrugged and pulled a face. “Grouw’s been tellin’ people it has to be a joke.” Wesley was shaking his head, almost violently. “No, I know, wrong excuse. Stinks for anyone who knows you. But... What you just told me? That you’d just got fired? You were doin’ the redefinition thing? This is L.A, that thing is what we do here. You give ‘em that background, they’ll take another look at the picture and go, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s three-months-fired alright. Like that summer I was gonna grow all my own food.’ You mind that gettin’ out? ‘bout you bein’ fired?”</p><p>Wesley shook his head. “What do we do? Put up posters? Organise a press-conference?”</p><p>Gunn couldn’t tell if Wesley was joking. “I’ll just do the rounds. Talk to people till they know there’s no mileage in that picture. Shiny machine, but the tank’s empty.”</p><p>After they’d eaten Gunn called Grouw, and then he decided to get started on the rounds straight away: couldn’t do better than Saturday night, and with the training and Wesley’s schedule at the church, it would be days before he had another evening free. He made good progress, and also worked out the next places he needed to include in his rounds; some he could do during the day, but most were strictly evening.</p><p>Wesley was at his desk when Gunn got home, and he was reading a book in Aramaic (or something), that he’d bought that day on the way to the church.</p><p>“You’re feeling ready to go back to translation? Thought it’d be another month. Maybe more.” Gunn hadn’t told Wesley how he was talking in his sleep. Would have felt like hassling him, but he should know in himself that he wasn’t ready.</p><p>“I need some intellectual stimulation. Staring at one blank wall after another, for hour after hour, day after day. My mind is starting to cannibalise itself. I need to remind it what real food tastes like.”</p><p>Cannibalise? No, Gunn wasn’t going to ask. “Be careful, OK? I’m gonna be watchin’ for you gettin’ weird.”</p><p>In bed, Wesley didn’t want sex, didn’t even want to be held. “It’s the picture. The idea of you seeing me like that. I want to disown my whole body.”</p><p>“You looked hot. Not hot like I’d fall in love with you, not your real way of bein’ hot. But I got no problems with seein’ you like that.”</p><p>“You weren’t...” A sigh. “I would have to seriously question the judgement of someone who wanted that.”</p><p>“Oh, come on! You must’ve got hit on ten times a day. You turn ‘em all down? Or just the women?” He grinned, showing it as a joke, but Wesley just got more uncomfortable. He’d been bad on Christmas Day too, hadn’t he? Off sex, and picking at something about women and Cordy and what did they see. Which would have been from the hearing, seeing the picture there.</p><p>“I decided in the first week that I was the type of demon hunter who was exclusively heterosexual. A complete redefinition. Which also meant not the type of heterosexual that I’d been before. The result probably looked very funny. Seen from a distance.”</p><p>A new type of heterosexual. We present another trick from Wesley’s brain. “Cordy didn’t know you then?”</p><p>“No, that was before. When I was still a Watcher. For which there are mercifully no photographs.”</p><p>Gunn nodded, and touched the back of his hand to Wesley’s cheek very lightly, for less than a second. “You gonna forgive me for thinkin’ you were hot?”</p><p>A small smile. “I’m halfway there. But can you keep from reminding me for a couple of days?”</p><p>They woke up close against one another the next morning, and Wesley was happy to stay like that as they lay and talked. No hint of sex, but enough to stop Gunn from thinking about counting the days.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Angel got a vision around nine of Tuesday evening, while Wesley was at home and Gunn was out doing the rounds for that damn picture. Very straightforward vision, couldn’t be clearer: a girl in danger from a Gogomol demon at 171 Oak, out in Reseda; looked like some magic was involved, some ritual. Gunn got there about ten minutes before Wesley, saw the girl moving around in the front room, no sign of panic or anything, and no chanting so the spell mustn’t’ve started yet. He knocked on the door and yelled, “My name’s Charles Gunn. And if you’re about to cast a spell I’m here to tell you it’s a bad idea. It’s gonna turn really dangerous, unless you let me help you.”</p><p>A long, long silence. He’d heard her go to the door and she had to be looking through the spyhole – at the last type of person she’d ever open the door to at night. Yeah, but he didn’t know if they could afford the luxury of waiting for Wesley.</p><p>“How’d you know that?” Not a challenge, just freaked out.</p><p>“We’ve got people who keep track. For the whole of L.A. You buy the books, you buy the equipment, you ask questions – they know.”</p><p>“Oh my God!” And the door was open, and she was telling him the whole history of this idea she’d had to bring her father back. She was still talking when Wesley arrived, though by that time the circle was dismantled and she was ditzing around collecting every candle in the house and asking Gunn about every jar of herbs in the kitchen, whether she needed to get Gunn to take it away to be really safe. One look at Wesley and she went quiet; could have been the arm, could have been the grimness and the stubble, could have been the bursting in with a sword. Wesley showed her Angel’s drawing of the demon, told her exactly which herbs, got her to carry everything out to the truck for them, and really hardly needed to give her the warning that they’d find out if she made any move to do it again.</p><p>Wesley’s glasses were broken: the right side-piece was missing, so they were balanced just on his left ear and his nose. Gunn had noticed immediately, but he couldn’t say anything until they were finished with the girl and they were on their own outside the house.</p><p>“What happened to your glasses?”</p><p>A sigh. “Angel fell on them. When he had the vision.”</p><p>“You were in with him?”</p><p>Wesley nodded. “An inch the other way and I think he would have smashed them to pieces. As it was, I couldn’t find them for at least a minute. We could have lost thirty minutes if I’d had to ask you to come and pick me up. Not that you needed me there, but...”</p><p>“Hey, you stopped her talkin’! Where I’m standin’, I owe you one rescue.” They laughed, and then Wesley said he ought to be setting off for the church; the caretaker would be expecting him.</p><p>“With your glasses like that? Come home ‘n’ let’s try ‘n’ mend ‘em first. They fall off when you’re on the ladder... Y’just don’t need another thing to put you off-balance.” Wesley took his point, and Gunn led the way home.</p><p>About four blocks away from the girl’s house, a sports car shot past the truck, and the glimpse Gunn caught of the driver looked so much like Cordy. He laughed and looked in the rearview to watch the car pass Wesley, half a block behind. Cordy in Reseda. Yeah, right. Her name comes up twice in three weeks, and that’s enough to have him imagine he’s seen her in Reseda. He mentioned it when they got home, expecting Wes to say, “What sports car?” but Wes had seen her and had thought exactly the same as Gunn.</p><p>They patched the glasses together with tape – good enough for one night’s painting – and the next morning, while Wesley was still asleep, Gunn took them and went to see about getting them mended properly. The side-piece was broken off near the joint; very difficult to solder back together, and it would probably break again within a month. But the optician had some spare side-pieces and they chose the closest match, which was a fraction of the price of a new set of frames.</p><p>“You should have a spare pair.”</p><p>“This is my spare pair. If anyone shows you the picture again, you can admire my ‘cool’ frames. They disappeared at some point during the fight with the Kungai. Since then...” A shrug. “There have always been other priorities.”</p><p>“Soon’s you get earnin’ again.” Gunn was stern. “I’ll be in charge of the envelope that says, ‘Money for Wesley’s Spare Glasses’.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Life was getting easier. Wesley would be earning soon, and Gunn was already picking up more work on his own – probably because of what people were hearing about Wesley. The displays of hostility at the church were steadily becoming rarer, though when they came they were still bad. The other side of that: people had started talking to him, and to Piriti. Piriti said that Wesley was so shy (and that was Solito’s brother talking there!): he never presumed, he hardly smiled; but he seemed to remember every word he’d exchanged with each of the Kekulei, and he brought that to each new exchange.</p><p>Piriti was back in touch with Matt and Grouw, and they were meeting at the beach-house at least once a week, with Gunn included about one session in three. No singing, though, no talk about returning to Caritas; that part of their friendship definitely seemed to be over.</p><p>Angel was having much less trouble with the headaches. He was still getting the mis-sent visions, about once a week, was still left so bad afterwards that he’d be sick to his stomach if he tried to stand up, and was still showing the damage with the multiple tracks. But he recovered more quickly each time, like maybe the scar-tissue was getting thicker. Or tougher. Giving him some protection, anyway. And he wasn’t fighting the pain any more, he just waited it out and the waiting seemed halved if Wesley was with him.</p><p>Gunn had no idea how often Wesley and Angel were having sex. Two times a week? Three? Some times were obvious, like when he got back from the beach-house and Angel was sitting there reading, and Wesley was horny-as-hell. Probably obvious, too, when Gunn woke up in the middle of the night and realised that Wesley had got home and was in with Angel, and then Wesley would have a long shower before he’d come to bed. Gunn never pretended to be asleep, and by the third time he’d decided that, no, he didn’t need to say anything to reassure Wesley about his privacy with Angel, so he could stop puzzling over how to raise the subject, how far he really wanted to go.</p><p>Wesley stopped talking in his sleep – or anyway he stopped talking in the way that worried Gunn. Wesley was thinking about normal things during the long hours of painting – or for a lot of them, he said, not thinking at all, just lulled by the rhythm into an easy trance. Still, no signs of anything being cannibalised, and when Wesley started wondering about the chances of Lilah having a piece of work that would fit in with his three-or-four spare hours a day, Gunn passed him the phone and told him there was only one way to find out. The work from Lilah didn’t quite put Wesley into “earning” (or not as Wesley’s spreadsheet would define it), since it was all done in hours that he owed her under the retainer, but felt like climbing out from massive debt and they decided they could start to rent movies with the beer money.</p><p>Yes, definitely easier, though from the outside it probably looked like one huge, boiling disaster. Wesley did, for sure. When they were out together, Gunn kept catching people doing double-takes at Wesley - from concerned to downright appalled - and usually there'd be a triple-take at Gunn himself - from puzzled to angry. You could bet they were wondering how the hell Gunn had let his partner get in that state. Wondering how Gunn could be so goddamn cheerful with that tight knot of torment standing there next to him. And Gunn would think "Yeah, I know he looks a wreck. I know. But you don't know... And I'm glad for you that you can't even guess... But it's not been long since he was a hundred times worse. A thousand. So no amount of side-eye from you is gonna stop me feeling this cheerful."</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>On the first Monday in March, Angel had a vision late in the evening as Gunn and Wesley were getting ready for bed. A Laclar demon above an alley at Alameda and 6th, Downtown, with a net laid as a trap down on the ground, set to hoist the victim straight up to the third floor and through the shutters into its lair. Fishing for humans.</p><p>Gunn didn’t like their chances of dealing with it in its lair. Even if they were quiet enough about finding the way in, why would it stay and fight when it could just jump out through those shutters? They’d do better if they could get it down onto the street and surprise it there. What if they triggered the trap in a way that looked like an accident? Wouldn’t it come down to reset the trap? Hard to arrange an accident, though, at midnight in a quiet alley, when the Laclar could probably see everything happening for half a block around. Why would a skateboard be rolling around on it own? If they even had a skateboard. Gunn got the idea when they were nearly turned onto 6th: they’d drive the truck over the trap; and then circle around and come at the Laclar on foot, from behind it, it if was looking the way the truck had gone.</p><p>The Laclar was already down on the street when they got into position. Wesley stepped out with the crossbow, Gunn heard the thud and the howl, and in the next second Gunn was taking the bow and handing Wesley a fresh one. He was listening for the next thud as he started to reload the first bow, but instead there was the crack of a gunshot, and Wesley cried out and fell to the ground. Gunn dropped to his knees, and grabbed the third crossbow to keep the Laclar off while he started to pull Wesley behind the cover of the wall. But the Laclar was running away, fast like it was panicked, and Gunn put down the bow and looked properly at Wesley.</p><p>He was hit in the chest, on his right side. Gunn leaned over him to take hold of his ankle and push his left leg up to an angle, and then used his bent knee as a lever to roll him over onto his right side. Give the blood a way out of his lungs, make sure he wouldn’t drown in it.</p><p>“The phone’s in the truck, Wes. You hang on.” He ran around the block to where they’d left the truck, the sword and the axe slamming against his back. He got through to 911, dumped the weapons on the front seat, and ran back to Wesley.</p><p>Wesley was fighting to breathe. The sucking sounds from his chest as he breathed in, the bubbling as he breathed out, the dragging, the rasping in his throat, the effort in his face. Nothing else that Gunn could read in his face: just the effort. Gunn knelt in blood, soaking cold to his skin, and folded both his hands around Wesley’s hand where it was pinned to the ground up by his chest.</p><p>“They’re on their way, Wes. They’re on their way.”</p><p>Wesley arched his neck back, rolled his head slowly against the ground. Effort. “ ‘ngel.” Arching back again as he breathed in, shoulders working harder even than his neck. “ ‘ngel.”</p><p>Did he think it was Angel with him? Thrown back to that day with the Kungai? “Angel’s at home, Wes. When I’ve seen you settled in the hospital I’ll get back to him. Help him if the headache’s bad this time.”</p><p>A fight now to keep his eyes open. His head jerked to the left, then back. “ ‘gel. ‘gel.”</p><p>“Don’t you worry about Angel.”</p><p>Gunn wanted to think he’d heard, and heard what he’d needed to hear, and that was why he let his eyes close then, and let his shoulders and his neck relax. But it only looked like that, and just for a second, and then his body slumped low, so low, and a sound came from his chest that was like the sucking and the bubbling combined, but slow, and far too long, longer than he ever breathed out in the deepest sleep. Gunn knew there was only one sound like that, he’d heard it before too many times: the death rattle. The eyes closing, the shoulders slumping: that was Wesley dying.</p><p>Gunn was thinking… No, he didn’t know what he was thinking, or for how long. He was looking at Wesley, he had Wesley’s hand held tight, and maybe he was thinking that the ambulance would be there soon, that the paramedics shouldn’t see the crossbows. And then Wesley breathed in, a shallow gasp that made his head rock back slightly, and the breathing out was the same long, slow slump under gravity. The rattle was different: quiet and short, almost a murmur.</p><p>Gunn had gasped with Wesley, and he held his breath as Wesley breathed out, and kept on holding it, waiting for Wesley to breathe again. Twenty heartbeats, maybe thirty, before he had to give up, but then when he took his next breath, Wesley breathed with him.</p><p>Another long, long wait, and another breath, and then more waiting, through all the time before the sirens approached. Gunn stroked Wesley’s hand over and over, coaxing him, willing him to take another breath. Knowing that Wesley had died some short time after that third breath, maybe even at the end of that third gasp. But waiting, not able to stop waiting, because Wesley had looked this still, this empty before each of those breaths. There was no difference yet, no difference that was sure enough to let Gunn stop waiting.</p><p>There was still no difference by the time he heard the sirens, but he knew there was something else he had to do now. Something Wesley would expect him to do. He got up, found all the crossbows, and hid them under a dumpster that was halfway back to the truck. They’d been driving home and they’d thought they’d heard someone in the alley calling for help. There’d been two guys and one had pulled a gun and then they’d both run off. And no, Gunn hadn’t got any kind of look at either of them.</p><p>He wouldn’t ride in the ambulance, he’d come after in his truck. Yes, he knew him, he hadn’t just found him there.</p><p>He watched the ambulance out of sight, then collected the crossbows on the way back to the truck. Hide all of the weapons in the space behind the seat, in case the cops wanted to walk him to the truck. Or followed him with another question. Or something.</p><p>He stripped off his jacket with the blood all up the cuffs, and his sweatshirt under that, down to his T-shirt. The blood on his hands was drying sticky between his fingers, stiff over the sides and the backs. He wet the sweatshirt with water from the bottle in the side of the door, and wiped them off before he’d put them on the steering wheel. His pants were dark, you couldn’t see the stains, or not for what they were. He could still feel them, though, cold and clinging, from his knees all down his shins.</p><p>At the hospital he helped them with their forms. Next of kin? “I – I – His family’s in England. I’m his partner. He’s got no one else here.” They helped him, told him straight away that he didn’t need to do anything, not here; just find a funeral director, because then they’d take care of all the arrangements. Was there a firm that his family...? No, then maybe he knew someone who’d recently... who might recommend...? Though if the funeral was going to be in England, then there were rules and procedures, and he’d have to ask for a firm that knew all the special arrangements.</p><p>He waited for the police. Told them the story, how “it all happened so fast”. The guys were white, mid-20s, street clothes, but that was all, he was never gonna remember anythin’ else. They went in to see Wesley while Gunn waited outside, and then they asked about Wesley’s arm and how long he’d been in L.A. and what he did for a living (“He knows a lot of languages.”). They said the slug might tell them something if they could recover it, but probably not enough. They had his address, he took their cards, and they walked him to the truck.</p><p>Angel was still in the vision, but far enough along that the worst of the noise was complaints about his head. Nearly three o’clock. What time would it be in England? Gunn booted up the computer and looked online. Eight hours ahead. OK. So he should call now. He couldn’t find the number in Wesley’s card-file (why would he, when Wesley knew it by heart?), but it would be in their phone records. Yes. Back in July. His mother’s birthday?</p><p>The longest number he had ever dialled in his life.</p><p>“Chichester 40305.” A man’s voice. Very brisk.</p><p>“Is that Mister Wyndham-Pryce?”</p><p>“It is. Who is this?”</p><p>“My name is Charles Gunn. I’m a friend of Wesley’s. I work with him in Los Angeles. I – I’m sorry but I’m calling with bad news.”</p><p>A brief pause. “You’re telling me that he’s got himself killed. What happened?”</p><p>Gunn swallowed. “It was three hours ago. He was shot in the chest when we were out in the street. I called 911 but he never made it to the hospital. I’m so sorry.”</p><p>“Who shot him? Was it a human? Is this a matter for the police?”</p><p>Well of course he knew about demons. That was how Wes had grown up. “No, it was a Laclar demon. Wesley had hit it with a bolt from a crossbow, but it got away.” And then he explained what he had told the police.</p><p>A grunt. “I suppose there’ll be an autopsy but after that they should agree to release the body for transport. Even if they had any prospect of obtaining a suspect, they couldn’t claim that it constituted evidence. In this situations it’s unwise to set a date for the funeral until the body is in the country, but one likes to know the likely range. You’ll have your undertaker keep in regular contact with ours?”</p><p>“I – Yeah. I’ll find one tomorrow. He’ll take care of all those arrangements.”</p><p>“Good. I’ll give you the number of the firm we’ll be using.” Then he shouted away from the phone: “Sylvia. Get me the number for Albins, will you? It’s for the boy.” Another voice, sounding shocked but Gunn couldn’t hear the words. No longer shouting: “Yes, a few hours ago. He was still in Los Angeles. Have you got it?”</p><p>Gunn wrote the name and number - on the phone bill, not on Wesley’s pad with the notes for his translation, and not using Wesley’s good pen – and he read it back for the father.</p><p>“Good. What was your name again?”</p><p>“Charles Gunn.”</p><p>“And your telephone number?” Gunn gave it. “Well, thank you for calling, Mister Gunn. We’ll call Albin’s now to tell them to expect the information from America. Goodbye, then.”</p><p>“Goodbye.” Gunn hung up then sat back with a thud, with his eyes closed and feeling cold, so cold. The boy. It’s for the boy. Shock. And stiff-upper-lip. And a bad father for Wesley anyway, so Wes had been glad to be sent away to that school. Gunn had known that. He’d already known that. And he’d called half-expecting them to want Wesley sent home, and he hadn’t prepared any arguments, he hadn’t been any way ready.</p><p>What did Wesley want? Had he left a will saying he wanted to stay, or saying it was Gunn’s decision? And if he hadn’t, was Gunn going to fight? Would Wesley have hated to go back? He didn’t want to be deported but... There were things that he missed about his home, there were times he’d been happy there. He’d been happier with Gunn, though. Much happier. But he didn’t trust the landscape, he thought the landscape didn’t want him.</p><p>The will. It all depended on the will. Gunn was about to kneel to look through the bottom drawer of Wesley’s desk when he realised that he was still wearing the same pants. They were dry now, but kneeling in them... No. Never again. He stripped them off right there, then went to the bathroom and washed his legs where they’d touched the clothing, washed his hands again, over and over, and high up his arms. Into the bedroom. Their bedroom. With their bed. Pain crashed over him, where he’d been numb before. He couldn’t deal with that, this wasn’t the time for that. He kept his back to the bed and he got a clean pair of pants and a clean jacket, and he took them back to the living-room and he got dressed. He took the other pants and he went down to the truck, and he got the jacket and the sweatshirt from the passenger seat and he threw them all in the nearest dumpster. Then he got the weapons from the truck and carried them up to the apartment. And then he went looking for the will.</p><p>There wasn’t one. He looked everywhere there could be paper, and there wasn’t one.</p><p>No. Well. Why would there be? He and Wes had never talked like that, about Angel as immortal and them as mortal and what that meant. They would have. They would have. In time. A year’s time, maybe, if the year was easier like it looked, if they could plan. But with Angel how he’d been, and Wesley... No, they’d never talked.</p><p>So he wouldn’t fight it. In the morning, when he went looking for a funeral director, the first question he’d ask was if they knew how to get Wesley home.</p><p>What now? So what now? It was 4:18 and Angel was finally asleep, and everyone that he needed to talk to was asleep now. He should sleep. He should try to sleep. Because the next day was going to be hard.</p><p>He couldn’t go back in the bedroom. He got Angel’s blanket from the weapons closet, and he turned out the lights and kicked off his shoes and lay down on the couch.</p><p>He didn’t want to think. About what had happened. About the next day. The next week. The next month. And he didn’t think. He managed to empty his mind, make the air in there too thin. Thoughts did step up, they launched themselves, but there was nothing to carry them. No drama, no wreckage, they just disappeared, like a vampire hitting a wall of sunlight.</p><p>No thoughts, nothing with any notion of direction. But images. Sounds. Feelings against his skin. All there, already there. Not needing air, nowhere to go. He couldn’t control anything about the way they showed themselves to him, like his mind was a spotlight swinging loose in a storm.</p><p>At 5:00 on the VCR, with no change in what his mind was doing, he accepted that he was not going to sleep. He booted the computer again and played Duke Nukem, and that took him past dawn and through till it was time to make coffee. When he turned away from the refrigerator holding the milk, he saw that he’d put out two mugs, and then he looked at the level in the jug and realised that he’d made coffee for two. He put the second mug back.</p><p>He had to tell people. He should make a list.</p><p>Lilah Morgan. The Kekulei. Piriti, in case he was expecting a page. Grouw, to get a message to the duals. So was he going to stop training? No, he’d always be training, it was part of his life, but... just him with two duals... Four against one, what would that be for? Until he knew, until he could imagine it, he’d be wasting their time.</p><p>Matt? Not for any reason but because otherwise he’d hear it from Grouw. Made more sense for all the boys to hear it the same way. And then Matt wouldn’t have to figure out how to make his call (“Oh, Gunn, man, I just heard...”?).</p><p>So Anne, then, as well as Rondell. Because she’d hear it from the crew. He would keep the training with the crew, same two nights a week. He’d done it before without Wesley. Done it long before he knew Wesley.</p><p>The bookstores? Guess they wouldn’t expect it, not in the same way, but if they’d got talkin’ Wes up for some catalogin’ work... They’d look stupid if they had to get back to the guy and say no, it wasn’t gonna happen. Not real stupid, ‘cos how could the guy get angry? But he didn’t want anyone, when they heard, to be thinking, “Damn! That’s gonna be a pain.” He wanted them to be thinking first of Wesley, not themselves.</p><p>Swift? Yeah. And she should know before he called the Kekulei.</p><p>Who else? Was there anyone else?</p><p>There was Angel.</p><p>Gunn felt like he’d got taken out of time, like he’d spent five minutes maybe with nothing in him. Or like a statue, just solid cold. Telling Angel. Dealing with Angel. Trying to be ready for what Angel might do.</p><p>He should chain him first, before he told him, because Angel might turn violent. And Gunn had to be able to tell him from close to, the way he’d want to be told. Not be shouting it from the doorway.</p><p>(“Sylvia!”)</p><p>It’s for the boy.</p><p>No. No. But he would chain Angel. He had to. And, really, would Angel even notice the chains compared to the knowing that Wesley was gone?</p><p>Grouw and Lilah got into work the earliest that Gunn knew of, around half past eight. He called Lilah first because she’d be the easiest, she’d know what to say; and they could make arrangements for returning the manuscript, they could keep it just business.</p><p>She was shocked, she was sorry, so sorry. Wesley was a remarkable man, she had always looked forward to their meetings. She could collect the manuscript directly from the apartment. Maybe that evening, around eight?</p><p>Grouw didn’t know what to say. A lot of “Oh, God”s and then “Is there anything I can do?” Gunn just asked him not to call Matt, or not until the evening because Gunn should have got through to Matt by then. And yeah, he was going to page Piriti right now.</p><p>Swift asked about the funeral. She expected the ceremony would be humans-only, but if there was a gathering afterwards... She knew many people who would want to pay their respects.</p><p>“No, it’ll be in England. The funeral. With his family.”</p><p>Then just a gathering? Something separate for L.A.? Gunn didn’t know, he hadn’t thought, he had to find a funeral director first. But he’d let her know, of course he’d let her know.</p><p>Wesley’s main contact with the Kekulei was a music teacher called Leeth. A deep, quiet shock, like he’d be staring at the wall and thinking about this all the rest of the day.</p><p>“I admit there were times when I regarded him as an exceptionally inconvenient fact. But he was a truly brave man.”</p><p>No hint that he’d even started to think about the room half-painted or the three or four still untouched; and the idea first came to Gunn out of gratitude and then was obvious in seconds as a thing that he needed to do, for Wesley: “I know you didn’t want me helping him. But would you let me finish what he started?” Leeth would have to talk to some people – not to get approval, just to inform them – and then he’d get back to Gunn and they’d arrange a time to meet at the church.</p><p>Not even 9:30. Oh, God. None of the bookstores opened till ten, best time to get Matt was lunchtime. He’d tell the crew at training tomorrow, and call Anne just before or just after.</p><p>A funeral director. They’d probably be open by now. If they ever closed. First of all, he had to get a handle on how much more was involved since Wesley was going back home, how much further he’d have to look.</p><p>He got the Yellow Pages, picked a local firm, and explained to them what he needed. What he needed was called “repatriation”, and no they weren’t able to offer that service but they gave him the number of some firms who did, including an English firm with an agent in L.A. He called the English agent first, and she was able to meet with him that afternoon, so he’d start with that.</p><p>Repatriation. So what made it so complicated? What was involved? He went online to search, and it was weird but most of the sites that he found were English. If he added “L.A.” to the search then he got news articles about bones and things in museums, where the tribe wanted them back in New Zealand. But no sites for any firms – or not high in the list – whereas take out “L.A.” and the top twenty had six sites for English firms. They must really travel a lot. (Or die, when they travelled?)</p><p>One of the sites was for the firm he was meeting that afternoon, and he was starting to read their details of the paperwork when he heard a quiet groaning from Angel’s room. Lucid, almost certainly, and with one of those headaches where he had to lie still. As good as chains. Better since it would go away on its own, should be almost gone the next time he woke up. But to tell him when he was in that much pain…</p><p>Gunn gave a long, shaking sigh, closed his eyes, and covered his face with his hands. There would never be a good time to tell him. Headache. Or chains. And Gunn would have to go in with the Exedrin and the ice-water – because that was what they did, that was how they tried to help him – and he couldn’t go in and not tell him, leave him thinking that Wesley might be back any moment.</p><p>He got up and went to the kitchen for the bowl and everything, and Angel stopped groaning and started calling for Wesley.</p><p>“No, Angel. It’s me. It’s Charles.” Shouted towards the door, so the disappointment would already be over by the time he went in.</p><p>Angel seemed glad to see him, managed a nod and a fractional smile as he held his head up for the pills. After he’d taken them Gunn said, “How bad is your headache, Angel? Is it bad enough that you can’t move, you couldn’t stand up?” Another nod.</p><p>Gunn moved back slightly, held himself poised on the balls of his feet, ready to run. “Angel, I have to tell you something terrible. About Wesley. He’s dead. He died last night. I’m so sorry.” Angel was looking hard at him, but showing no reaction. After about ten seconds, a slight, puzzled frown, but then that quickly eased. Angel wasn’t even breathing. “Angel? Did you hear me?”</p><p>A slow, slow blink, then: “What happened?” Faint curiosity, no more.</p><p>“You know we go out and fight sometimes? To help people who are in trouble.”</p><p>A nod. “He fights with a sword.”</p><p>“Most of the time. Well, he was hurt very badly. And he died before help could reach him.”</p><p>More silence, some deeper frowning. Eventually: “What have they told you?”</p><p>Couldn’t be less of a clue what he was thinking. Gunn wasn’t going to make anything up: he wouldn’t know where to start. “What do you think they should tell me?”</p><p>But Angel just looked away, towards the door. After maybe a minute, back to Gunn: “Do they know where he is?”</p><p>In the nearest morgue, but of course he didn’t mean that. “I think probably… he isn’t anywhere.”</p><p>Angel closed his eyes, then gave a slow nod, and another, and opened his eyes again. “But you’re still here.”</p><p>“Yeah. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”</p><p>“That’s good.” A long sigh. “It will be different without him. We will want him back.”</p><p>Understatement. Or maybe it wasn’t with Angel. What the hell did this mean? How did he go from being so protective and fixated when Wesley cut his hand, to – To this nothing. Maybe he’d seen this happening. Every day he’d known that this could happen. A vampire, looking at a mortal.</p><p>“I have some things I ought to do, Angel. Is it OK if I leave you on your own? There’s the ice and the cloth there, for your head.”</p><p>A nod, with Angel already closing his eyes and turning his head away from the bowl and the door.</p><p>Gunn sat down again at the computer then found that he was shaking. Adrenaline. Got so keyed up about telling Angel, imagining so hard on his behalf. Wasted effort. Total wasted effort. What had Wes said once? Laughing, because he’d planned something for Angel and then Angel was all “Yeah? So?” Saying that would teach him to forget how “He’s not sane. He’s not human. And he’s not me.” Wes laughing. But Gunn was still shaking.</p><p>No sleep. Too much coffee. He could lie on the couch and try to get a couple of hours. But he was waiting for Piriti to return the page, and what good would two hours really do? Should do something about eating soon, or the shakes’d get worse all day.</p><p>Get out, go to the park or something. Walk. Sit. Things being green, being quiet. Look out for a diner on the way.</p><p>The diner was almost empty, still serving breakfast. He had pancakes, bacon, eggs. Orange juice, not coffee. He sat and stared out of the window. The world out there, and Wesley not in it. He couldn’t let himself think about what that really meant for him. Not yet. Not now. He could feel the gathering inside him, a breath being drawn deeper and deeper and he was terrified of the scream that was coming, how he would ever make it stop.</p><p>Piriti called when Gunn was halfway through his second transit of the park. Gunn had thought Piriti was going to be worse than Grouw and he was right. Grouw had taken it in enough to start thinking that he should be saying something, he should be doing this better. Piriti was raw reaction, not aware of what he was saying. “But he –”, “But he –”, over and over, and “No”. Finally, full-force: “But what are you going to do?”</p><p>“I’m going to finish the painting. I think he’d want it finished. I – Probably be easier on my own. Just workin’ straight through.” Cold, but he didn’t need Piriti’s help, not like Wesley. And he didn’t want him, not in this state, not to be locked in alone with him for hours every night. Should be Solito’s job, not Gunn’s.</p><p>Matt was the first one to mention Angel. “You – You – Know nothin’ll help but if you’re ever feelin’ like you want company... Y’just call. Any time. Know there’s Wes’s sick friend but... You’ve never talked like he got to be your friend.”</p><p>“I – Yeah. Yeah, thanks.” He might. He might call. Matt had been good, really good in those first few days after Barney. The only person he’d told about how Wesley was then, how he wouldn’t let Gunn near.</p><p>Gunn went back to the apartment to get the phone bill where he’d written that English number. Angel was still lying the same as Gunn had left him: half on his front, with his face buried in the crook of his arm. Not his usual way when his head was that bad: he usually lay flat on his back. But then usually Wesley would be with him, talking quietly to him and keeping his forehead cool.</p><p>Gunn had some time before the meeting so he read the rest of the firm’s website. Airline regulations said he had to be embalmed, he had to be in a coffin with a zinc lining. Special paperwork for the British Embassy, to get permission for the journey. Special paperwork for the airline. More once he was home, maybe another autopsy. No prices, nothing for anything. But a warning in bold at the bottom of every page, saying that payment must be made in full before the repatriation could proceed. How much would a coffin be with a zinc lining? How much was airfare to England? More than they had, obviously more than they had. But how much more?</p><p>The agent was a tall woman all in black, chestnut hair in a thick plait down her back, held herself like a ballet-dancer – or maybe just like an undertaker, always on duty to be still and respectful. First-off she asked Gunn about his connection to the deceased.</p><p>“We were partners.”</p><p>“Business partners?”</p><p>Gunn paused, shrugged slightly, then nodded.</p><p>“Mister Wyndham-Pryce had been living here in the States? For some time?”</p><p>“ ‘bout three years.”</p><p>“Who is the next-of-kin?”</p><p>“His parents. Dunno whereabouts they are, exactly. But they gave the number of the funeral director that they want to use.”</p><p>She nodded. “Have you met his parents? Did they ever visit?” Gunn shook his head. “Will you be going to England for the funeral?” Definitely not. She nodded again and started going into the details of regulations and paperwork and what she could do herself, and what she would arrange with the L.A. funeral director. There were three or four L.A. firms that she used regularly, all excellent for price and service; she would recommend choosing the one closest to LAX in the direction of the hospital.</p><p>“How much is this gonna cost? It’s gotta be thousands, right?”</p><p>“For a death in these circumstances, depending on the choice of coffin, it would be between three thousand and four thousand dollars.”</p><p>Gunn couldn’t help himself: he flinched then shut his eyes hard, frowning and gritting his teeth as he tried to figure out how the hell he would get that. Borrow it, but... Who did he know who might have it to spare? Lilah Morgan, but he couldn’t do that. It would be out-and-out begging and he just couldn’t. Anne? If she hadn’t spent all of the money that Wolfram and Hart had raised for her, and he was pretty sure she hadn’t. He could manage to ask Anne, because she knew from the inside what it was like to have to ask. He’d go to the shelter straight after this.</p><p>“Mister Gunn?” Gently.</p><p>Gunn snapped straight back, saw a look like real concern. He smiled, shook his head, and said, “Was a rough year for us, last year. Guess I’ll hafta sell one of the racehorses.”</p><p>“You don’t have to do anything. The costs are met by the next-of-kin. The remains belong to them. In legal terms, the repatriation is a service that they have chosen.”</p><p>Gunn blinked, then took four heavy breaths. “I can’t ask them.” She’d probably think it was guilt, not knowing what to say to the poor parents. If only. He’d borrow ten thousand, and from Lilah Morgan, rather than have to speak to Wesley’s father again.</p><p>“You don’t have to. We will. The financial side is handled by the main office in England. I just make the arrangements here. We’d contact them at the start, via the people at Albins, to explain how the process will work. That is, if you decide to recommend us to them.”</p><p>Gunn looked down at the floor. After about ten seconds: “Would I be able to see him? Before he leaves?”</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>He swallowed. “I don’t know what clothes of his they’ve got over there. If he left any. Could I – I’d like to see him in this one suit. I’d like to remember him like that. Can I choose what he’s wearing?”</p><p>“For the repatriation. Yes. It would be very good if you did. But they –”</p><p>Gunn interrupted, shaking his head. “That doesn’t matter. What they do. I’m never gonna know.” Then nodding: “Yeah. Yeah, please. I want you to do it.”</p><p>She explained to him what would happen over the next few days, what contact she’d have with him. When they were finished she walked him to the door and she shook his hand.</p><p>“I’m very sorry for your loss.”</p><p>Standard words. She must say them ten times a day. But she said it like she meant it, like she saw him. She’d never known Wesley – not like Lilah or Piriti or Swift. All she’d seen was Gunn: Gunn how he was without Wesley.</p><p>Tears were suddenly stinging Gunn’s eyes, and he blinked them away hard, and shook his head and grunted something, and pulled his hand away and walked fast, fast down the corridor, ran down the stairs.</p><p>Ten minutes sitting in the truck thinking about selling Angel’s car, about who owned Wesley’s books, and he was back in control. He decided he’d call Anne now, call Rondell too.</p><p>They weren’t shocked. Sad, asking Gunn what they could do, but not shocked because they’d had this too many times before. This was what happened. Friends died by violence in the street.</p><p>Back to the apartment. He was tired now, really tired, his brain feeling full of sand, trying hard to turn into cement. Leeth probably wouldn’t call back until the evening. He could sleep until Lilah was due to collect the manuscript.</p><p>Angel was lying on his back now: with his pants halfway down his thighs, busy having a happy wet-dream about Wesley. Gunn shouted, “Oh, you... fucker!”, unplugged the screen with a yank, and was one move away from grabbing the heaviest book within reach and throwing it through the screen.</p><p>“Monster. Fucking monster.” Under his breath as he was walking away from the door. But where was he going? Still to the couch to sleep? He did need to sleep. But with Angel next door doing that?</p><p>The bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed and took his shoes off, but then he just couldn’t lie down.</p><p>The bathroom floor, with Angel’s blanket and then half the towels. Yeah, he could sleep there the way he felt now. He set his watch for 7:30 and then turned out the light. Of course Angel was a monster. He should have been prepared. Angel got turned on by the idea of killing Wesley. He’d lived with that for months, he shouldn’t still be shocked. That was how it was. Deal with it.</p><p>He slept.</p><p>Lilah had brought him a lasagne, a couple of Chinese dishes and some egg-fried rice, and a pack of beers, all from Trader Joe’s. “Just in case you didn’t have anything. Or anything that required this little effort. If you’ve already eaten, they’ll keep.”</p><p>Gunn had been rescued: from either plain pasta-with-olive-oil, or from his first attempt to cook liver.</p><p>Lilah had a special envelope for the manuscript. Gunn gave her Wesley’s notes and she put them in a separate folder. She asked how he was, offered help. He shrugged, said he’d told most people who needed to be told, he’d found an undertaker.</p><p>“Does he know?” Nodding towards Angel’s door. Gunn hadn’t yet plugged the screen back in. Angel was quiet.</p><p>Gunn nodded. “Doesn’t seem to care. I thought he’d turn violent. Dangerous. But he was almost bored.”</p><p>“Why would he be violent? Would he see it as a chance to escape?”</p><p>“They were close. Much as you can be with him. He trusted Wesley. But y’can’t predict him. Waste of time.”</p><p>She looked at the door, expression very serious, then sighed and turned back to Gunn. “If you think of anything I can do. I know you’ve got so much to deal with. I’ve spoken to Gavin Parks, so he knows the situation and you needn’t worry about eviction. He’ll give you indefinite extensions on the rent. I vouched for you.”</p><p>She wanted to keep Angel in L.A. But she was thinking of Gunn, too. She was imagining. Gunn thanked her, and then she left.</p><p>Gunn plugged the screen in and found that Angel was sitting reading the salt book. When had Wesley last fed him? Thirty hours ago, at least.</p><p>Angel had got up onto his knees at the sounds from the door and for the first half-second he was radiating welcome but then he slumped, he looked hollowed out. He thanked Gunn for the blood, polite but barely glancing at him: all of his attention was on the doorway, and he was so anxious, and so hopeful. Oh, God. Have to tell him again. And with the chains this time.</p><p>When Angel saw the chains he started to pull his sweater off. It would probably be easier to let him think the chains were for the shower, but Gunn didn’t want to be with him naked. Or lie to him. “No, Angel, keep your clothes on. This is for something else. Shouldn’t be for long. ‘n’ no one’s gonna hurt you.” Angel nodded, looked alert and curious.</p><p>“Angel, I have something terrible to tell you about Wesley. He died last night. I’m so sorry.”</p><p>And there it was: disbelief. Closest to Piriti’s reaction: pure, stunned disbelief. Gunn gave him maybe half a minute to take it in, then: “I am so sorry.”</p><p>Five second more staring, then Angel frowned, shook his head sharply and said, “Again?” Puzzled, demanding, impatient.</p><p>“Yeah, I –” Gunn sighed. “I’ll always be sorry. But I won’t say it again if it’s gonna bother you. Guess y’don’t need t’hear it.”</p><p>Even more puzzled. “What?”</p><p>They stared at one another, both breathing audibly. Finally: “Angel... I know there ain’t a right thing to say. It’s just fillin’ in. You tell me there’s anythin’ you need. Like... need to know. Need to hear.”</p><p>A beat, then Angel growled, and surged against the chains. “Why’s he dead again? It’s too. Fucking. Soon.”</p><p>Jesus! Gunn lurched backwards from where he’d been kneeling and nearly lost his balance. “Dead again? He – Angel, you know he wasn’t a vampire. He died last night. I saw it. I was there. That’s it. That’s it.”</p><p>Fierce, shaking his head over and over. “They can’t keep him away from me. He has to be with me. They gave him to me.”</p><p>Gunn clutched his head and shook it so his teeth rattled. “No. No. You and your fucking ‘them’! He gave himself to you. And he knew all along it would kill him and now it has. Shut the fuck up about ‘them’ and – and – Face the fact that he’s gone.”</p><p>Angel had been listening, and listening seriously, but it was clear from his expression that he was hearing something else. He left a pause then said gently, like the undertaker women, “They don’t tell you anything, do they? It won’t be long. And he’ll be just the same, he’ll love you just the same.”</p><p>Gunn gave a strangled cry and threw himself toward the door. He wasn’t going to cry, he wasn’t, he just had to – he just had to –</p><p>In the laundry-room, face forced against the back of his arm over the seat of the chair, hands gripping the edge of the frame, feeling it bend and fight. He was crying. Not sobbing, no noise at all, but his eyes were weak, they made him cry. He dragged them over and over against the sleeve of his jacket, trying to force the tears back in, but now his mouth was opening, wide, wide, and his throat was rising, and he was going to howl.</p><p>Just in time he lunged forward and his jaws closed around his wrist, and the pain gave him something else to hold onto.</p><p>He washed his face at the sink, dried it on the other sleeve, then went upstairs to take Angel out of the chains.</p><p>“Thank you.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“I’m sorry.” Looking like he wanted to touch: a hand on Gunn’s shoulder, at least.</p><p>“Yeah, I know.” And Gunn stood up and was gone.</p><p>Leeth called when Gunn was about to eat. He’d now informed all of the relevant people and could Gunn meet him at the church at 1 p.m. the next day? Also, was Gunn able to find Wesley’s copies of the keys to the church? If not, then Leeth would get another set made before their meeting. Gunn found the keys in the bowl, labelled “Church” in Wesley’s handwriting. Wesley was so organised. So consistent in the ways he was organised. If he had left a will, Gunn would have been able to find it in ten minutes.</p><p>Gunn put some music on and ate at the table, then drank beer and watched TV until it was nearly midnight and he thought he was ready to sleep again.</p><p>Midnight. By the clock in the truck Wesley had died sometime between 12:10 and 12:35. Probably 12:20? That time, those times, would have a weight for him now for the rest of his life. He lay with his back to the VCR, and then he suddenly got off the couch and went over and unplugged the VCR. They never taped anything, anyway – who cared if the clock wasn’t set?</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Gunn spent all the hours that he could at the church. He didn’t need the demons to move furniture for him, so he didn’t have to stop when he was waiting for the paint to dry in the one room, but could move on to the next. A hundred times a night, when he was using the ladder, he’d imagine doing this with only one arm. Endurance. Silent, solitary endurance. He’d seen that in Wesley from the start, and he knew now that Wesley had been forced to it, most of his life. To keep going when every day was a grinding effort, because you knew it was right.</p><p>The Kekulei were kind to him. They didn’t talk to him but someone was leaving soda and snacks for him, and as soon as they saw that he was working on more than one room in a night, Leeth called and asked how they could give him most help with the furniture.</p><p>He was getting home exhausted around seven or eight. He’d have a bath, feed Angel if Angel could be fed, and then fall into sleep for a solid six or seven hours.</p><p>He wasn’t dreaming, not about anything, but Angel was dreaming a lot about Wesley, and sometimes about Gunn – or about someone, anyway, who was raging with grief. When he was lucid he’d try to be so subtle about how he was waiting for Wesley, and so tactful with Gunn. He never tried to say anything, but he always stood up and went over to take the beaker, getting right up close and radiating waves of “support”. Gunn didn’t try to argue with him again, he just couldn’t face it.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Wesley’s body had been released to the mortuary, but the paperwork was still going through the consulate and the flight probably wouldn’t be for at least another week. The woman called and gave Gunn a contact for arranging the suite and the viewing.</p><p>“Mister Gunn, you should be aware... The services that have been ordered on this side do not include preparation. That will be done in England for the viewing there. That means... that his face won’t have the colour that you might be expecting.”</p><p>Lady, I live with a corpse. But no, Angel only looked what he was if you starved him for two weeks. He thanked her for the warning, and asked what the English firm was like, if they had anyone who’d done this before: cutting open the zinc box. Yes, they’d last done it just a month ago, and she talked some more about the firm: the history, things about them that had impressed her. In the process Gunn learned that Wesley was going to be buried, not cremated, and that they were expecting to have to move him to a different casket.</p><p>Gunn had finally told Swift that there wouldn’t be any gathering in L.A. He had several reasons, thought he didn’t give her any of them. One: the people who’d expect to be there couldn’t be allowed to meet – if the crew was put in the same room with Swift and Piriti and Leeth, then remembering Wesley would drop right off the list. Two: they’d never had anything for Alonna, never for anyone in the crew - and he had to deal with that idea in his own way, on his own. And Three: Angel could never have been there. Two people in the world who loved Wesley. Made no difference that one of them was so crazy he might never accept what had happened. If they couldn’t both be there, then there would be no point: it would be empty, and a lie.</p><p>On the day before Gunn had arranged to take the suit to the mortuary, he went into Angel’s room with a pair of nail-clippers, and he cut off a lock of Angel’s hair, close to the temples. He’d wondered if the hair would turn to dust, but it didn’t, and he wrapped it securely in a square of Angel’s drawing paper, and he put the packet deep in the inside pocket of Wesley’s jacket. So Wesley had that from Angel, and the ring from Gunn; he wouldn’t be going home alone. Angel had asked what Gunn was doing and Gunn had said, “It’s for Wesley,” knowing that Angel would see that as a promise, and hardened now to those looks on Angel’s face.</p><p>He took all of the beer money along with him to the mortuary, and after he’d passed over the clothes and seen them handled with care, he said, “I know they’re not paying you for preparation. The family. But with that suit...” He took the roll of bills out of his pocket. “He should be clean-shaven. The colour doesn’t matter but he should be clean-shaven with that suit. Do you know how much –”</p><p>The mortician raised his hand to block out the sight of the money. “I’ll see to it. I know. You want things right.”</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>The next morning, Gunn came home for the church to find Angelus there, stuck in a vision. Might be a real vision, might be a fake vision – hard to say anything except that the cursing of the headache suggested it was at least two hours old. And Gunn didn’t care, he really didn’t care. It might be different if it was Angel and there were drawings of the actual person. The eyes showing the terror, the pleading, the praying that this couldn’t really be happening. But then it might not.</p><p>If he’d been in the apartment when it hit, if he’d managed to figure it out, then he’d’ve called the crew and yeah, great to make a difference. But he’d missed it and, y’know, he really didn’t care. Not like Wesley would have. Or Angel, when he was sane.</p><p>In the bath, with Angelus drowned out by the running water and the rush-hour traffic, Gunn thought, “I can’t see myself doin’ this alone. Can’t see anyone, comes to that.” Been different back when Wesley was on his own: Angel knew about his own visions back then, he didn’t need babysitting, he could go out and do most of the fighting. Now you needed two, at the least: to watch him in shifts, to go out and earn the money, to fight with some chance of surviving. And to keep each other going.</p><p>But he couldn’t bring someone into this. How could he do that to anyone? It was no life, it was hell. More: it was close to being murder –spending time with Angel could kill you. Doyle: six months. Wesley: two years. Those weren’t good numbers.</p><p>Not that Wesley had “brought” Gunn into it, not like Gunn was thinking now. He’d thrown himself into it, not given Wes much choice. Where he was meant to be. Always. But for anyone else... He’d say, “Run. You don’t want this. You don’t want to know if you could handle it.”</p><p>The crew. Yeah, he’d thought about that. Safety in numbers for the visions. Share the watching over so many people you’d hardly notice it. But asking them to take in a vampire, feed it, help ease its headaches... Even if he explained about the soul like Wesley had, that wouldn’t be enough. Angelus spoke for himself, and they’d kill him for it the first time they saw him. Be murder again. Two weeks for Angel, max.</p><p>What, then? Who? A group like the crew, but demons? Didn’t exist – or he’d have met it on his rounds – but he’d put together one crew, he knew he could make another one.</p><p>And offer them what? A life off the streets, yeah, but then risking that life to rescue humans from other demons (stupid humans, a lot of ‘em, who should never have gone down that street in the first place). If they had any sense, this crew, then once they’d learned his style and his tricks they’d ditch him and Angel and strike out for themselves. ‘cos he wouldn’t really be there for them, not doin’ it for them. For Angel. And for Wesley. That’s what Wesley had been trying to say, wasn’t it, when he was dying? “Look after Angel.”</p><p>No, as far as Gunn could see, the only people who’d take it on would either be crazy or would have some weird reason of their own, enough to make it balance out. Like... voyeurs. Or keen on the chance for bondage. Not for love. Please. Please. Do anything but send him a man who would do it for love.</p><p>Maybe that was it, though. The Powers would send him someone? If they had sent Wesley as a gift to Angel. Or even sent Gunn to Wesley, so it was all arranged, that they’d meet at the thrift shop? Maybe. Maybe. But they’d made their choices too, him and Wesley.</p><p>That morning he went to the bedroom to sleep for the first time since it happened. Partly wanting another door between him and Angelus. Partly feeling Wesley was near him again somehow, because of the suit. He lay awake for a while, going round the same thoughts about Angel, and then the thoughts crowded him too, in his dreams.</p><p>When he woke up he was lying on his left side, facing the empty space, and he was solid hard, aching with it. Not just his cock aching. His skin, too many way to count. And inside him, like begging. His hand: to slide flat over Wesley’s stomach and then fit to the curve of Wesley’s waist. His thighs: for Wesley’s knee pushing between them. Wesley’s knuckles on his throat, Wesley’s mouth opening to him with a sigh. He pulled at himself, rough, wanting no pleasure, wanting this over. He wasn’t asking his mind for anything, would want it blank, but it gave him the first time he’d ever woken up in this bed, with Wesley in his robe sitting up beside him.</p><p>He could go back to the couch. Or to the bathroom floor. But he wouldn’t. It was going to be like this for him. For years, maybe for years. Not one thing he could do to change it.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>The flight was booked for Tuesday the 19<sup>th</sup> of March, 5 p.m. with Virgin Atlantic out of LAX. They’d be sealing the box on Monday evening, and Gunn went late on Monday afternoon.</p><p>Carefully shaved, and his hair combed and neat, but no colour. You couldn’t think for a second that he might breathe again. Two weeks dead. Nothing to think except he was two weeks dead.</p><p>Gunn stood looking down for a long, long time. Then he drew a deep, slow breath, and laid the back of his fingers, so lightly, against that beautiful hand. He moved his middle finger from side to side over the ring, feeling the edge, the pattern. Then still for another breath, a gentle stroke down to the fingertips, and lifting away. Lips to his cheek, just for a moment, “Goodbye, English,” whispered in his ear, and Gunn straightened up and left without looking back.</p><p>Gunn finished the work on the church that night, and he had a last meeting with Leeth at lunchtime to hand back the keys and explain anything they wanted explaining. The three priests must’ve been told about the meeting, because they all came in together and thanked him, and said some right things about Wesley. As the meeting was winding up, Leeth gave a sort of awkward cough, reached around the side of the desk and brought out a large bag, the type you get from the fancier stores, made of thick card with a flat bottom, and with glossy cord for handles.</p><p>“We.. Uh – We know you’ve ruined at least one set of clothes doing this. That is, so you can’t wear them outside the house. We think these are... Well, they’re similar to our eyes. And the fit... shouldn’t be too small.”</p><p>They’d bought him new clothes. Sweet, and weird, and maybe kinda creepy. The money would’ve been more useful, but for this work, no, he couldn’t ever accept money from them. And they must’ve felt that too. Leeth obviously didn’t want him to take out the clothes then and there, so Gunn was able to imagine the best while he was saying what a surprise, and how thoughtful. (Could be the perfect clothes in there, exactly his style. Could be.) And it was thoughtful. Wesley would have been so proud, so happy.</p><p>Turned out they were good clothes. More plain than he would have picked out for himself (no lettering, no pictures), but no kind of chore to wear. White T-shirt, long-sleeved orange top, dark-green denim jacket, and loose-fitting black pants. Sizes all looked right, too, though he wasn’t going to try them on yet. Wesley’s last day in L.A., Gunn was staying in this outfit, the one Wesley had liked best.</p><p>He got to Manhattan Beach around 4:45, found a bench just above the beach near El Segundo, and stayed there until 5:30, watching each jet as it came rising into view and headed out across the ocean. So regular, clockwork almost; the last one shrunk to just such a size when the next one would power itself out. He couldn’t read the logos, not really, just as a smear of colour, but the red at 5:20, that was probably it. He didn’t feel much: calm and sad, like he’d felt since he’d said goodbye.</p><p>He spent the evening at the beach-house, which he’d planned with Matt since the day the flight got booked. They went out to rent a movie and get take-out from the curry place in Santa Monica, but they didn’t watch the movie in the end, just played some Nintendo and talked. Gunn told Matt more than he expected to about the last few weeks, even as far as Wesley’s family, and Angel so sure that Wesley would come back.</p><p>Matt was horrified at the thought of Angel. “Y’can’t be left with him! He’s gotta have some family. Somewhere? Right?”</p><p>“They’re all dead.”</p><p>“What you gonna do?”</p><p>Gunn shrugged. “Take care of him. Like Wes did.”</p><p>Matt already knew most about the church, from Piriti, and on one thing he’d known more than Gunn, ‘cos Piriti had passed Leeth on to him for advice from a young human male on what clothes to buy and where and what sizes.</p><p>Woah! Now there was “thoughtful”, and there was “too much thinking”. How many meetings had they had over this? “Can’t believe they’d go round half my friends. Could’ve just –” Going to be: Could’ve just asked Wesley. That was gonna keep happening. Like putting out two mugs. Feeling six times a day like he should be making tea.</p><p>He switched to soda early, after two beers. Matt said he could stay the night, but Gunn had been keeping such bad hours, he’d be better off at home, trying to get back to normal.</p><p>In the morning he dressed in his new clothes, and they did fit, and they looked even better on. Wesley would have loved them – and shown it by wanting to get him out of them.</p><p>Angel was awake and lucid, so Gunn went in immediately to feed him. Angel came up close, as usual, and he was slow with his drinking because he was in the mood to tell Gunn what he’d been reading about salt. But after four mouthfuls he suddenly stopped, and his expression turned mistrustful and threatening, and his head pushed forward and moved from side to side like a snake’s. His breathing was building to a snarl and Gunn was heading for the door, but Angel was too quick and there was a smash to Gunn’s jaw and a crack to the back of his head, and then darkness.</p><p>Gunn guessed afterwards that he was probably out for three or four minutes. As soon as he’d surfaced enough to remember what had happened he struggled to his feet, fighting against the nausea from the blow to his head. The door was wide open and Angel was gone.</p><p>He needed a crossbow. The net, chains, a pike – in case he managed to take Angel alive. If Angel had just run out into the street, then he was already dust. But if he’d managed to find his way underground... Couldn’t ask the crew to help search, but Angel was so strange, so damn loud, some demon down there was gonna notice him and talk about it – and Gunn would be listening everywhere he knew.</p><p>The front door was closed. But the door to the bedroom was open and they always left it shut.</p><p>Angel was stretched out face-down on Wesley’s side of the bed, and he’d pulled most of Wesley’s clothes out of the closet and piled them on the bed, and he was holding onto them like he’d never let go, pressing his face into Wesley’s shirts like he wanted to drown in them. Moaning very low, and rocking his head and shoulders in time with the moans.</p><p>Gunn went over and sat on the edge of the bed, and put his hand on Angel’s shoulder and made soothing noises. Eventually Angel became still, then quiet, and then he slowly rolled over onto his side and looked up at Gunn. Reaching up to touch Gunn’s jaw: “I’m sorry.”</p><p>Gunn wasn’t going to tell him it was OK. “Is this because I don’t have his smell on me?”</p><p>A nod. “I know I should be patient. You’re – You’re so patient. They have to find him or bring him out. It’s not... But it’s – There’s a space where he’d supposed to be. It’s worse than – It hurts to touch it. I know I should be patient, not think... ‘It could be today.’ Because when it’s not.... I – I – I almost wish I could stop thinking about him. Until he’s back.”</p><p>Tell him again? But he wouldn’t believe. He knew, deeper than Gunn could ever reach, that Wesley had been taken from him before – and always brought back.</p><p>“You can’t be in here, Angel. Come on. Come back to your room.”</p><p>When Angel got up, some of Wesley’s clothes got dragged off the bed onto the floor, and Angel stood and looked at them, then closed his eyes like he was going to start moaning again. Gunn grabbed the nearest shirt from the bed (the blue one, from the first time they’d kissed), unfastened the pin from the sleeve, and pushed the shirt into Angel’s hand. “You should have that. To be patient, yeah?”</p><p>They cleaned up the spilled blood together, and then Gunn brought another pint. Angel didn’t stand close to drink it but took it back to the wall with the books, where he’d folded the shirt. When he was alone again he took the shirt over to the mattress, and curled up over it, and rocked again.</p><p>* * * * *</p><p>Gunn got back to his Wyndham Gunn work. But it was lonely, even out talking to people half the day, and he didn’t have a chance with the languages, and he didn’t really know his way around the books, and it never felt like anything more than a chore. He could manage the cases he had now: he’d been sure enough of that when he’d taken them on, and besides he’d talked them all over with Wesley. But looking for more... He’d feel like a fraud.</p><p>And he wasn’t made to be on his own. He’d never thought he might be but this was the first time he’d ever done it and God, was he not! He had to find some other way of working, some other way of living, but what? Every day he was saying it to himself now: “What are you going to do?”</p><p>On the Saturday after Wesley left, Gunn got a call during breakfast from Lilah Morgan. Could she come over, in half an hour perhaps? She had a proposition to put to him.</p><p>Her firm wanted to take over the care of Angel. She knew the task had been hard enough with two people, it must be nearly impossible with just one. She would have approached him immediately – probably should have – but she’d decided to wait until she had something concrete to show him. Would he come with her for a short ride downtown?</p><p>She turned in to a large parking garage, and parked in the lowest level. In the elevator, she brought out a key for the control panel, turned it one way, then back the other, and the elevator went down. The doors opened on a bright space at least the size of Gunn’s apartment. One main room, twice the size of Gunn’s living room, with major renovation work going on: wiring everywhere, and plumbing over in the far corner, and partitions going up, and boards and boxes and wrapped shapes stacked in marked-off, numbered areas against the wall.</p><p>She took him over to a large trestle-table in the middle of the room, with a hanging-rack of drawings next to it. The drawings on the table were the designer’s drawing, of the finished room, but Lilah would pull out the working drawings from the rack when Gunn asked questions about any of the details. Angel would have a shower area, right there in his room. And a chair and a table that folded out of the wall, and the mattress up on a platform. And shelves for his books and a closet for his clothes, and transparent areas built into the walls so they could give him pictures. And everything could be shut tight and locked down when Angelus was there – just with the flick of one switch – so he had no props, nothing to use as a weapon; but when Angel was back then another flick and everything was returned to him.</p><p>Four cameras. Total coverage. And they could feed him without going into the room, just put the beaker through a special hole in the wall. In fact, all of Angel’s storage spaces could be reached from both sides; they could give him things, take them away, without putting anyone at risk or scaring Angel. And they’d set everything up so they could monitor him from a distance, though they wouldn’t make full use of that until they were sure that he’d use the electronic drawing-blocks that they were building into all the walls, always use them to draw out his visions.</p><p>The rest of the space would be set up with the assumption that there might be up to three people on duty, sometimes for hours at a time, sometimes overnight: with a bank of monitors (with built-in VCRs), racks of weapons, a reference library, internet access and all the normal facilities of an apartment.</p><p>“You gonna keep him in solitary, then? Everything remote. Just a few minutes each day to give him the blood through the wall. Like someone in to water the plants.”</p><p>Lilah shook her head. “We’ve designed it so we can do that. If it’s easier for him. But we’re hoping you’ll help us to make contact with him. And to understand him. If you could be here during some core hours for the first few months, and maybe hold a two-hour clinic once a week to discuss problems or options. And be on-call to help us interpret the visions.” A small smile. “I won’t quite say, ‘Name your rate,’ but I think you’ll be happy with the range that the senior partner has approved. It will be strange, I know, taking a different responsibility.”</p><p>“Can I come and... just see him?”</p><p>“Of course. You’ll have the highest rights of access. Though we’ll have to agree on the limits of your authority.”</p><p>Gunn nodded slowly, looked all around him, then walked very slowly to the far end, into Angel’s space. He paced it from one side to the other, his hands brushing the walls, imagining the table, the bed, the pictures, the gleaming shower-room with Angel’s shampoo and soap and washcloth all laid out.</p><p>He went back to Lilah, who had waited by the drawings. “When will it be finished?”</p><p>“In a week. I sent the contractors on a break. They’ll be back and working as soon as we’ve left. We can move him any night after that. When you’re satisfied with the training of his staff.” Another smile. “You’ll know most of them from December.”</p><p>Gunn took a deep breath. “He’ll be terrified. He was a wreck last time we moved him and he was halfway sane then and he had Wesley to see him through. Anchor him. I’ll have to work out something to tell him ‘bout what’s happenin’. Christ. He’ll probably think we’re takin’ him to find Wesley.”</p><p>Lilah nodded, pulled a sympathetic face. “But it has to be done. And he does adjust. Doesn’t he?”</p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, he does.”</p><p>They went back up in the elevator, and arranged their next meeting for 10 a.m. on Monday, with Lilah coming to the apartment to discuss the details of Gunn’s contract and the plans for the training and the move. She dropped Gunn off at the kerb and he immediately got in the truck and went to the park and ran and ran until he’d thrown off enough of the blaze of bubbling energy that he felt small enough to be able to fit into the apartment. He put music on loud, and attacked the rest of his breakfast like a wolf thrown a steak, and then danced around the apartment like he was boxing.</p><p>But Angel was in hell, and anything new was bad, especially new and loud. So Gunn stopped after his second-favourite track and went to have a shower. He did sing in the shower, but once he was dressed again (in his new clothes), he threw himself backwards across the width of the bed, and stared up at the ceiling and tried to get calmed down.</p><p>Lilah was right, the change would be strange. He’d been thinking, as he paced Angel’s space, “If only Wesley could have seen this.” But Wesley would have turned it down, because his duty to Angel was completely his. He would never have surrendered that responsibility, not while the task was on the right side between “possible” and “impossible”.</p><p>Wesley would understand, though, wouldn’t he? That it was impossible, now, and this was taking care of Angel. Much better care. And the visions would be covered, really covered; so Angel’s pain, the damage, it wouldn’t be wasted, it would go to the purpose that they knew Angel wanted. Yeah, Wes would understand.</p><p>A movie. He wanted to see a movie. Something just opened, whatever there was. Maybe Matt’d be up for that, too. He went out again to get a paper, read the reviews and the listings there in the truck, then called Matt and they were soon settled on “Panic Room”, 12.30 in Redondo Beach.</p><p>The moment Matt saw him, his eyes went wide and he said, “Something’s happened. Something good?”</p><p>Gunn nodded, over and over. “Turns out Angel does have family. Here in L.A. And rich. God, what they’re setting up for him... He’s gonna be – Near’s he c’n get to a life.”</p><p>After the movie they went to a coffee-house. Matt was meeting Holly at four, but she’d be totally cool if he cancelled, or if Gunn was there too. He hadn’t been telling her much about Gunn and Wesley (and Angel), but, yeah, enough.</p><p>Nah, time Gunn went home. His brain was already racin’ away, workin’ on plans for helpin’ Angel settle. He’d just be starin’ into space half the evenin’, Matt and Holly having to talk round him. Out on the street they hugged goodbye, a tight hug, happy.</p><p>Gunn took the paper up to the apartment and sat on the couch with a beer, kind of reading, but not really. He’d have to have some story for Lilah’s squad about Angel and sex. Be obvious Angel was jerkin’ off over Wesley, but could Gunn keep it so they never even wondered...? Tricky, with Angel treating Wesley’s shirt like it was... Well, most days like it was the only thing in the world.</p><p>They’d have to watch out for the scent wearing off, be ready to catch the signs. Keep the other clothes sealed tight, deep under ice. Make them last as long as possible. Would that be years? Or just months? They’d see it coming, anyway.</p><p>Or maybe he’d forget Wesley. The visions would wipe Wesley out, bit by bit, if Wesley wasn’t there every day. Making Angel trust him again, every day. Maybe. Maybe. And they’d see that coming, too, like Wesley and Gunn had seen it coming the last time. Which was just a year ago.</p><p>Gunn sighed and swallowed, and focussed on the paper and found that he was holding the business section. Hah! Rich people. Never thought he’d be sayin’ this but thank God for rich people. Hey, did Lilah ever make the news? Or... Now what was her boss? Holland Manners?</p><p>He scanned the section but of course there wasn’t anything – would’ve been way too much of a coincidence, gettin’ somethin’ today. Online though... The computer was already on. He took his beer over and brought up Google and typed in “Lilah Morgan”.</p><p>Wolfram and Hart.</p><p>What?</p><p>Oh, this must be from three, four years ago. Course she hadn’t been with the investment firm forever.</p><p>No. First story was from just December. She was joint chief of Special Projects, just got promoted. And there was a picture: Lilah, and her boss Holland Manners. And the other chief, this Lindsey McDonald... Yeah, that pretty white boy had to be Anne’s expensive suit.</p><p>Oh, Christ.</p><p>Search for “Gavin Parks”.</p><p>Wolfram and Hart Real Estate Division.</p><p>Gunn shivered so hard the mouse skidded off the mat and nearly knocked over his beer. He was inside a piece of Wolfram and Hart property. He had been for over a year. He had to press his hands flat on the table to stop himself from looking round, up at the ceiling. Surveillance. Remote surveillance. Oh God, oh God. Oh, Wesley. Angel. God, what had they seen?</p><p>The interns. Now what were those fuckers into? But there was only one name he remembered: “Newton Robbins”.</p><p>Not business news, but police: missing since the evening of June 5th 2001. Last seen leaving the offices of Wolfram and Hart, where he really had been an intern. June 5th? Now...</p><p>Gunn couldn’t remember to the date, but Wesley kept a desk diary, and the one from last year was right there on the shelf. June 5th had been a Tuesday, and, yeah, Gunn did remember that it had been one of the midweek training sessions when they’d got back to find Newton gone and Lilah’s boss there instead. And look, the week after, Wesley taking Lilah and the interns out to lunch to thank them because that night had been the last one. And Newton not there for the lunch because “his mother was still sick in hospital”.</p><p>Angelus was there that night. Gunn remembered Manners commenting on him, Angelus being so wild that he was burning himself against the door. He’d had blood down his chin, splashes on his shirt, and Wes had said they had to stop using the interns, Angel was just getting worse with the smell of new people. They’d thought he’d bitten himself. He’d got to the point then of refusing the animal blood; he wanted human, he was aching for it.</p><p>Oh, they’d been stupid, him and Wesley. They had, hadn’t they? It was obvious, it was all there laid out. But they’d believed it, they’d believed that Angel was worth it because he was unique, because if you saw him once you’re remember him for the rest of your life. Worth all the time, all the money. Believed it because to them he was worth it. And they’d never imagined someone seeing him and thinking only, “I can use that. “</p><p>Use him for what, though? Use him for what? What were they trying to do when they’d picked the lock and gone in and fed him human blood? Did they want Angelus? Was Newton an accident or had Manners thrown him in and locked the door?</p><p>And December. December. When they’d had him for nearly a week. What had they done that got Lilah that promotion?</p><p>They’d given him the new visions. They’d done something, hadn’t they, to open him up? Make him pick up messages that were never meant for him. Had it worked? When they watched him now, did they see what they wanted? Gunn could never know; but he could be sure they had more like that planned. He closed his eyes, and opened his mouth to whisper, “Angel. I’m sorry.” But they’d hear it. He had to guess that they’d hear it.</p><p>Had Angel even had that vision? The vampire and the guy in the diner, while he and Wesley were away? They’d seen the drawings but those could’ve been faked. All to make them trust Lilah more.</p><p>He didn’t want to think about Wesley’s translations. What they’d really been used for. Make-work. Say they were make-work. Keep a route open to the seer. Let Wes earn enough that he’d stay in easy reach.</p><p>So why hadn’t they just come in and taken Angel, if they wanted him that much? It had suited them before, to have Gunn and Wesley doing all the work? Suited them now, to have Gunn’s co-operation? But they’d be gone, wouldn’t they, the day after the move? No, ‘cos then Gunn would go looking for them. They’d play it smarter. Two, three months in they’d call and tell Gunn that Angelus had managed to trick them, they’d had to stake him to save themselves. They’d show it to Gunn on the tapes – Angelus turning to dust - and the CGI would be so good Gunn wouldn’t ever think to question what he’d seen. He’d mourn Angel, in his way, and he’d wonder how much was his fault, what he could have told them about Angelus that would have let them see through the trick. But then he’d move on, he’d find another way to make a difference. And Angel would be somewhere screaming, would still be there when Gunn died of old age.</p><p>But... Was there any way they were genuine? There was another explanation, they’d had good reasons to lie? Swift would be the best person to ask. Ask her what was the worst she knew about Wolfram and Hart. And, yeah, the best she knew too. Ask what would be so special to them about a vampire seer that they’d make him a project.</p><p>But Gunn couldn’t call her from the apartment, or from out in the hallway on his cellphone. Right now he had to assume the worst: that they’d be listening. He could go out to find a payphone, but that would mean leaving Angel. And assuming the worst, then… They had tracking on the computer, too, they knew exactly what he’d just found out. Or they could tell just from their cameras that something had suddenly killed the buzz he’d had from getting the good news about Angel, and the first thing they were thinking was he’d changed his mind. So he couldn’t leave Angel to go and call Swift, because he had to guess they were already on their way to take Angel. He was on his own. Whatever he was going to decide here, he had to do it on his own. And he had to do it fast, before Lilah’s squad broke down the door and took the thing they must think they’d already paid for.</p><p>Was he really that sure the squad was on its way? He’d been going to ask Swift the best she knew about Wolfram and Hart. So what could she have told him that would have made everything look different? Explained why they’d lied, why Angel was worth so much to them. A seer and a finance firm, Gunn could understand, he could see how they’d have budget every year for “predictions” – not charity, not some partner’s hobby-of-the-month, but a solid part of their business, that kept its place because it kept on earning it, year after year after year. For a law firm, though, it just didn’t make sense. And that was why Lilah had given Wesley the story about the finance firm, why she’d been lying to him right from the start – because she didn’t want Wesley asking those questions, because she didn’t have any story that would be good enough to convince Wesley that Wolfram and Hart was a normal law firm.</p><p>Gunn couldn’t guess what they really were, why they really wanted Angel, but what could you do with Angel the way he was now, except try to keep him together, or try to take him apart? The headaches. That was all the proof Gunn needed. The headaches and the blood on Angelus that last night with Newton. They’d been waiting for over a year (waiting for Wesley to die?), and that patience said even more to Gunn than the headaches about how much they planned to get from Angel.</p><p>No. They couldn’t get Angel. No doubt now for Gunn. With a normal law firm, maybe he’d say, “No. I’m sorry. I’ve changed my mind. I should have been thinking about what Wesley would want. And he’d want Angel to stay with me. It’ll be tough. But it’s what I gotta do.” Not like he’d asked them to do all that work, get that space ready for Angel – they’d taken that on themselves.</p><p>A normal law firm would take no for an answer, maybe even wait a few months before making the first move to evict him. With this law firm... It’d just be days after he’d told them no that he’d come home to find Angel gone, maybe with a bag of burglar’s tools set down by the front door, and a guy dead in Angel’s room with his throat ripped out. Would they find a real burglar? Or just use another intern? Or maybe they wouldn’t bother making it look like anything – because who could Gunn tell, what could he possibly do?</p><p>He could get Angel out now, go on the run to... To where? Taking Angelus out of that room, trying to deal with him in the truck. Trying to keep himself safe, to keep other people safe – when Angel was damn-well going to get noticed, have people coming to check out those noises. Kids, especially. And they’d be so fucking easy to track, him and Angel, easier every day. Lilah’s squad would find them. And then Gunn would have to kill Angel, because he’d know by then that it was the only way he could save Angel from this thing they had planned for him.</p><p>Gunn turned around in his chair and looked up at the screen. Angel was asleep on his mattress, curled up with his back to the camera – probably curled up around Wesley’s shirt.</p><p>Killing Angel. Killing him now. It was the only way. He had to assume the worst: that the headaches were only the start, a five-day measure of what they’d do when they had Angel forever. Wesley would want Gunn to save Angel from that. He would. And Angel would want it too. Even if Wolfram and Hart were planning to look after the real visions, to pick up the mission... Well, Gunn was deciding here and now that Angel was already paying too high a price for those rescues. He’d been brave for long enough, accepted his punishment for long enough. Been a danger for long enough. He shouldn’t be asked to risk anything more. It was time for the Powers to find someone else.</p><p>First, Gunn was going to get ready to run; he was planning to survive this. He would be willing to die if that was the only way to save Angel – and he’d risked his life before to save people from less – but from what he could see, he still had options. He was going to pack first, so he’d be ready to run as soon as he’d killed Angel. Run and get a safe distance, and run and see if anyone was following. Maybe Wolfram and Hart wouldn’t bother with revenge, maybe that wasn’t their style; but he didn’t know and he was keeping on with assuming the worst.</p><p>Gunn got the big bag from their weapons closet and emptied it out in the middle of the living-room floor, like maybe he was going round to the crew to do some serious training. He loaded a crossbow and put it on his desk, then grabbed a couple of stakes and put them next to the crossbow – to be in easy reach of Angel’s room in case the squad was already on its way.</p><p>He sat down at the computer to delete the History information from his browser, so they couldn’t know exactly what he’d searched for, but then he decided that he wanted them to know – he wanted them to know why he’d killed Angel, that it was for normal, rational reasons, not some crazy, guilt-ridden outburst. He wanted them to know that he was thinking clearly, that he was a quantity that they could reckon with. He left the computer on, and did the next thing on his list: finding the pad on the bookshelves, the one with Angel’s drawings of Wesley. He took the pad into the bedroom and packed it at the bottom of his sports-bag with two weeks of clothes, then put the bag on Wesley’s desk and went to the bathroom to get his toothbrush, his toothpaste and his shaving kit. Back in the living-room he got all the beer money, packed Wesley’s index file, and that was it: all he really needed from the apartment, no reason left why he’d ever come back.</p><p>Angel was still asleep, didn’t know any sign of waking up when Gunn opened the door. Gunn went about six feet into the room to take aim with the crossbow, but keeping his distance in case Angel suddenly woke up as Angelus.</p><p>The bolt went through Wesley’s shirt, pinned it to the mattress. The dust didn’t rise up, it just sank down – like it wasn’t surprised, like it had been waiting. Gunn did look back from the doorway, just for a second, wondered what he would have said if Angel had been awake, how he would have handled Angelus.</p><p>He put the crossbow on Wesley’s desk, picked up his bag, and then he was gone. He called Lilah once he was down in the truck: it was terrible, it was tragic, he’d never know what it was he’d said, but Angel had attacked him, knocked him to the ground, and escaped. Gunn had run after, but Angel was too quick. Angel must not even have known it was a real street, real sunlight when he’d run out, left the shadow of the building. Minutes ago, just minutes ago. First thing he’d thought of: get the work stopped.</p><p>Yes, it was a tragedy. What an end. After everything. She – So much more to say, but yes he was right, the first thing she had to do now was get the work stopped.</p><p>A quick sign-off, then Gunn threw the phone out into the street. He started the truck, and he drove north, watching all the time for signs he was being followed.</p><p>How far north was he going to head, and for how long? Maybe as far as Oregon. Depended how far he had to go to find a place he could blend in, get enough work to keep him comfortable, so he wasn’t taking the type of stupid chances that’d get him noticed. Somewhere not too small, probably, but small enough that he might get enough warning that the squad was closing in.</p><p>He’d have to get new plates for the truck. There was a place he’d heard of near Glendale, and no reason he could think for the squad to know he’d heard of it. Should buy him enough time to get a feel for the type of town where he might be able to stop, how difficult it was going to be.</p><p>Should he act like he’d come to settle, or act like he was drifting? Drifting. Simplest to tell the truth. Had a rough year in L.A. and he’d taking some time to clear his head, but L.A.’s his home, of course he’s gonna go back. Maybe after three months. Maybe six. However long it would take for him to convince Wolfram and Hart that he wasn’t gonna make problems for them. Who would he even tell, for God’s sake? The worst he could do would be nothing more than a scratch to something the size of Wolfram and Hart. And he could still manage to be grateful to them for all the ways they’d helped Wesley, kept Wesley from the deepest kind of trouble: paying him enough to support himself and Angel, making him a place to live where he’d never be evicted, and giving him those days in San Diego. Didn’t matter that it was all part of their plan for Angel. They’d done more good than harm, and not just for Wesley but for the people in the visions, who’d been rescued because Wesley and Angel had been able to stay in L.A. No, Gunn thought they were even, him and Wolfram and Hart.</p><p>He’d start by calling Swift, who still seemed the best person to ask. Ask just how far they were from being a normal law firm, where they stood on revenge, if she knew anyone who’d needed to reach an agreement with them, who could tell Gunn where to start. He’d call her on Monday, not try to guess now what she’d say.</p><p>Would he ask her why Wolfram and Hart would want a vampire seer? Tell her about Angel? Too late now, wasn’t it? Probably safest for her if she didn’t know. And if he was trying to convince Wolfram and Hart that this thing between them was contained, then he couldn’t have it getting back to them that he’d been talking across half the town. So he’d keep it vague with Swift and anyone else, what this thing was with him and Wolfram and Hart, tell them outright they didn’t need to know.</p><p>Not tell anyone that Angel was dead. Was that what he’d decided? Only a handful of people now who’d even heard of him, and for most of them he didn’t even have a name, he was just “Wesley’s sick friend”. Swift would ask, though, wouldn’t she? Wesley had told her he couldn’t do what he suggested, he couldn’t get out of town for six months until people forgot about Barney – because he had this sick friend who couldn’t be moved. So where was this sick friend now, when Gunn was calling from Salinas?</p><p>Well, he got sicker, and he died.</p><p>Got sicker because Wesley was gone? If he’d died so soon after Wesley...</p><p>Yes. Yes. Wesley was the reason he’d lasted so long. Wesley hadn’t known that, none of them had, but once Wesley was gone then it was just a matter of time. Nothing Gunn could do. Except... Except take care of him through to the end, try to make it easy.</p><p>Gunn couldn’t imagine that he’d ever tell anyone how he’d killed Angel. To understand it, to hear it and still think of Gunn the same way, you’d have to know that Angel was a vampire, and what sort of vampire – and who needed to know all that now?</p><p>Gunn found he was wanting to do something to remember Angel by. Get his name written somewhere, if it wasn’t going to be spoken. If Angel had been awake, what would Gunn have said when he’d gone in with the crossbow? Or what would he have wanted to say, if he could still say it and be able to do what he had to do?</p><p>I’m sorry. Thank you for loving him. I should have told you before... that you were all he was thinking about at the end.</p><p>Yes, he’d get a stone put up somewhere, as soon as he could afford it. He owed it to Angel, and the stone would give him something simple to focus on in the times (like now) when he was thinking ten different things about Angel. About Angel and Wesley. Same idea as when he’d bought the ring for Wesley. And that’d helped, that’d helped, for the type of jealous he’d been feeling back then. A way of keeping himself close to Wesley, being with him all the time. And it still helped, for the feelings he was left with now.</p><p>Was he glad, that Angel was dead? No. No. Not glad. He was sad, he was sorry, he truly was. But relieved...? Well... how could he not notice that he’d just got his life back? And that morning he’d been dancing around the apartment singing because he’d found someone who wanted to take it off him: the burden of looking after Angel. It was an impossible burden for one man alone. It was, it was. And it frightened him to think the state they’d’ve gotten to six months from now, him and Angel, if they’d just been left to themselves.</p><p>But he hadn’t killed Angel to get his life back. He hadn’t. And he never would have thought of that six months down the line, or six years, no matter if it got worse than the worst time with the crew. He hadn’t killed Angel for the times he’d been angry or been jealous or been scared or had to listen to Angelus – or for anything to do with himself. He’d killed Angel because he’d finally run out of choices. Angel had finally reached the end of his time. Stolen time, most of it, and Angel had known that. Like Wesley had been made to feel that his own time was an always-resented loan, like he’d never had any right to it. So every day when he knew in his heart he was useful, when he knew he was loved... that had felt like a gift to him, from the other end of time. They’d neither of them be wanting to call it a tragedy, be wanting to yell that they should have had more. They’d had more than they’d expected – and there were tragedies in that to Gunn’s eyes, there were crimes, and they’d be part of Gunn’s thoughts for the rest of his life.</p><p>But for today... For his first day as the survivor. He was wondering what they’d say, Wesley and Angel, about the place he’d had in their lives, the changes he’d brought when he joined them. Had he ever made things so wrong that they’d wanted him different, they’d thought about him gone? And the answer came straight back: no. No, he’d been their Gunn, right from the start, before he’d even known that Angel was a vampire. They’d accepted him, they’d adjusted to him – the things they’d understood, the things they didn’t – and they’d never wanted him different. They’d want him to be here, now: heading out of town with everything he needed, knowing he’d kept the mission, knowing he’d kept the worst from happening, and planning all the time to survive.</p><p> </p><p>The End</p>
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